Two poems, Jessica Coles
Meet the enchantress, wherever she is
on the way to the pond where
I contemplate the innocence of frogs
I remove my shoes, leave behind
scarf and belt that disrupt ecosystems of narrative
hem of my skirt teaches forgotten lessons
how to rot with purpose
who could reject an offer of metamorphosis?
I grow extra joints to leap from logic
weave moss, reed, algae into wisdom
this marshy garment redefines sweetness:
witch-selves I drowned re-emerge
to croak twilight joy
Ignius Benevolus
Joy is an elusive light, a path that leads
to insubstantial ground
in dark forests, untrustworthy flutters
and sparks at the edges of sight:
what guides my doubtful steps?
Perhaps not all flickers of
luminescence intend deception.
What if delight can be captured, what if hope’s phantasm
has solid edges—in the right shadow?
Perhaps you teach my feet
lightness, how to dance through swamps
so that when toes meet water’s edge
reeds coalesce into cobblestone
shifting shape like the joy of being
beckoned down a safe path that restores
my faith in ethereal candles
that lures me
home.
Jessica Coles (she/her) is a poet from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, where she lives with her family, a tuxedo cat named Miss Bennet, a tarantula named Miss Dashwood, and a green keel-bellied lizard named Bao Long. Her work has appeared in print and online at Prairie Fire, Moist Poetry Journal, Full Mood Mag, atmospheric quarterly, Stone Circle Review, CV2, The Fiddlehead, Capital City Press Anthology (Vol. 4), Ghost City Review, slips slips, and elsewhere. She has self-published two chapbooks, Unless You’re Willing to Evaporate and The Lyrics Prompt Poems: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (prairievixenpress.ca). Find her on Bluesky @prairievixen.bsky.social
