Foundry
  • Home
  • About
    • Masthead
  • Archive
    • Issue One
    • Issue Two
    • Issue Three
    • Issue Four
    • Issue Five
    • Issue Six
    • Issue Seven
    • Issue Eight
    • Issue Nine
    • Issue Ten
    • Issue Eleven
    • Issue Twelve
    • Issue Thirteen
    • Issue Fourteen
    • Issue Fifteen
  • Guidelines

Newly Wed

in this one room shanty without windows
only one good sack of millet for hunger
 
and no matches I have risen from the bed
which is only a stolen sheet cast over straw
 
to cook you breakfast. I want to be good
for you. but what do I know of striking flint
 
or bringing anything to flames.
once my aunt tried to teach me
 
said lean in whisper your sins to smoke
said you could be forgiven by fire.
 
but momma lifted her nose at low labor
and I never learned how to burn my secrets.
 
we are not speaking now. momma and I.
she has her feelings about this dirt floor shanty
 
with no books and that flea hop bed
where you named me woman.
 
I know I won’t be young forever but want forever
and I have seen how breast can fall in my family
 
but if I could cook you this millet
watch you eat and smile… damn it.
 
this flint won’t spark. you startle awake
to me beating the dark rocks together
 
your eyes already keening
for something I don’t yet know to call hunger.
 
I say teach me to light a fire
you say woman come back to bed.
Picture
Jack Delano. Rural Scene, Near Andover, Maine, 1940. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. 

Brionne Janae is a California native, teaching artist, and poet who has left Boston where she completed an MFA at Emerson College, and is headed to Brooklyn. A recipient of the 2016 St. Botoloph Emering Artist award, Brionne is also a proud Cave Canem Fellow. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, jubilat, Sixth Finch, Plume, Bayou Magazine, The Nashville Review, and Waxwing, among others. Brionne’s first manuscript, After Jubilee, will be published by BOAAT Press in winter 2017.
Back
Next
© COPYRIGHT 2022. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About
    • Masthead
  • Archive
    • Issue One
    • Issue Two
    • Issue Three
    • Issue Four
    • Issue Five
    • Issue Six
    • Issue Seven
    • Issue Eight
    • Issue Nine
    • Issue Ten
    • Issue Eleven
    • Issue Twelve
    • Issue Thirteen
    • Issue Fourteen
    • Issue Fifteen
  • Guidelines