it is a night for nostalgia and hectic forecasts. i didn’t burn the dinner and the sun went down just the same, like an egg, like an egg poached in smoke and i never saw the news. the past, like a foreign city beckons in a mirror—high hope and bright light— and i wonder if […]
Mara Jebsen
Mara Jebsen
Mara Jebsen is a Language lecturer at NYU. She performs many of her poems in New York and writes essays for 3quarksdaily. She is a 2009 NYFA fellow in poetry.
Mara Jebsen: Manhatta Menagerie
(Manahatta, I’ve heard, was once the word for “hilly island in wolf country”) each was crouched in the bare-bone black- knuckle misery of his private winter. then come the intoxicant of air. now, unfurling from our spines: small creatures— a dragon, wolf, tender-necked giraffe; the tawny, sweet-blooded african lion; a witch stick-puppet from our childhoods […]
Mara Jebsen: A Reason to Howl
A grieving mind is wild dogs & flowers. It wags a center like a stamen, like a dusty yellow tongue. It soothes the heartache of a widow as she grips a wooden spoon, plumping up a chicken in a pot of sliced onion. Her bad husband undid her apron. He was risen shining-fresh from the […]
Mara Jebsen: Island
Love is a country I lived in once. You can only get there by boat. Over here, things are pretty good. The grass grows straight & the sky makes sense. I have a lot of little tasks. Sometimes when I sing, I sound like someone else. Birds interest […]
Mara Jebsen: Sundays in Lomé
By the jelly blue lights of an ocean The day wakes, and breaks into sweat Beach saunterers gossip of potions, The power of juju, the wet Face of a madman, whose wife, they said put a spell in with the onions— It was a Sunday of church, vodou, and knife Her stewpots were seized by […]