Jessica Huset
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Written as part of the Exquisite Cento Project with Zebulon Huset
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[Only lines from Lord Byron, Thomas Lux, and the script for The Princess Bride] (or I’ve hired you to help me start a war)
To mingle with the quiet of her sky
the quicksand pits they built were good
sink on the heart, as dew along the flower
between a pitchfork’s wide tines,
—all that I have and more
Its sleepless summer of long light,
with mad disquietude on the dull sky,
perfect, with eyes like the sea.
I myself am often surprised at life’s little quirks.
*
As philosophers allow,
they were safe, a wave of love—
away with your fictions of flimsy romance
like an avalanche of smoke and black fog
foreseeing the lower lips of glaciers.
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
that you would save them again—
the road right, and the river’s silver
in the pastures below. It rains, it rains
of cloudless climes and starry skies
as if his veins would pour out his existence.
Love is like this at the bone, we hope. Love—
your vote of confidence is overwhelming.
No. No. We have already succeeded
It endures in histories.
But let that season be only Spring.
It’s not the world which is good or bad
Isn’t that a wonderful beginning?
You are my bread,
the original inhabitant of this planet—
a madness or a beginning
lying on the surface of the pond
—about a hundred miles of nothing.
This kind of bird flies backward
like a grieving arrow.
It’s been freshly soldered over.
All is as the wave wills
alone with his universe still,
the still silence of the space beyond.
The juice of stars
enormous within your small hands,
like an arrow in my bow, like a stone in my sling
with purpose or direction—
like mold on flame, these red leaves
the weight of this fact
working cooperatively with the alien colonists
from other planets.
The car sits idling
like an ember, gold burns in its fingers—
they are scattered now, dead or silent.
The secret government
before the bomb went off—
those who barely had time to be born
tall and pillowy against the dark sky,
a colonizing force that cannot be defeated.
Everyone’s invited to the party—
to its wave without water.
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[Only lines from Pablo Neruda, Diane DiPrima, and Script for X-Files (1998)]
You are my bread,
the original inhabitant of this planet—
a madness or a beginning
lying on the surface of the pond
—about a hundred miles of nothing.
This kind of bird flies backward
like a grieving arrow.
It’s been freshly soldered over.
All is as the wave wills
alone with his universe still,
the still silence of the space beyond.
The juice of stars
enormous within your small hands,
like an arrow in my bow, like a stone in my sling
with purpose or direction—
like mold on flame, these red leaves
the weight of this fact
working cooperatively with the alien colonists
from other planets.
The car sits idling
like an ember, gold burns in its fingers—
they are scattered now, dead or silent.
The secret government
before the bomb went off—
those who barely had time to be born
tall and pillowy against the dark sky,
a colonizing force that cannot be defeated.
Everyone’s invited to the party—
to its wave without water.
__________
Jessica Huset (she/her) earned her MFA at the University of Washington. Her poetry has appeared in Apeiron Review, Crab Creek Review, Rip-Rap, Sidereal Magazine, and Kestrel among others. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and currently lives in Texas with her husband and cats.
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Posted in When in Rome: Nov '25 and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry