Folded Word
Exploring the world, one voice at a time.
Category: WrittenWordWednesday
The Road to Big Bend
Under an interrupt-this-broadcast gray sky. Headed west toward the quiet edge of Fort Worth the sky gets bigger. Deep in January the land is naked, exposing the razor burn hidden by the green in spring in summer. But winter is honest. And beneath the…
Still Life with Motion
In photographs, the Earth is still a circle. It’s a geometry we keep relearning, just at new velocities. We’re always at the open end of the radius. Asymptotes. The way any two numbers have infinite numbers between them, two numbers even further apart have…
To Be Tacked On Corporate Doors
A bird stands in heaven. Spring. Cold, still. Taking the day one sky at a time. How deep the beats of wings, how smooth the gusts that raise them. Beauty. Spring cold. The sky one day at a time. Beauty still. We humans belong…
Cape Cod
Life can be lonely, winters are harsh red-winged blackbirds sing in the marsh spreading the word all throughout May and on cranberry bogs, “It’s opening day” families bond in sandals and sunhats at kettle ponds, on trails and beach flats pairs of lovers, delicate…
Insect
I am an insect, carapaced, visor-faced and joyful. Smaller than other travellers, I fight the air’s viscosity and feel its every rip and eddy, its waves of coolness under trees and its warmth over sunlit fields and tarmac. You hear me before you see…
If You Had Eyes
If you had eyes, you would stare slowly, very slowly, upwards at the many shades of green and the single blue. Even without eyes, you sense the blue and reach towards it. You expand in the warmth and drink in air and light. These…
Two Quatrains
Galley The oak sails before the wind, going nowhere. Its first autumn leaf picks the lock on its manacles, escapes: One more illusion of freedom. Lauds (2) A penitent crow puffs up and shudders, lifts his wings as the sun rises, letting light…
Prayers for Maa Ganga
Sunset invocations for purification rise up from worshippers at the river’s edge like incense through my unbraided Western hair to the streets, where exhaust thick as dust storms fills the undulating lungs of millions. On jammed highways and byways cars and motorcycles beep warnings…
Five-Point-Two Miles
And so, I went walking car dodging, road hopping, side walking past a greyscale alley. You went with me, held me back when foot slipped into traffic and life flashed memories. She went with me, yelling about walking exactly two-point-six miles to the sea….
autumn light flashes…
autumn light flashes my son blending sounds into words ©2018 by Jennifer Roman Jennifer Roman lives in Millstone Township, NJ with her husband, identical twin boys, and dog, Chewie. She has been published in Frogpond, Modern Haiku, The Heron’s Nest, Presence, Mothers Always Write,…
Old Apple Tree
Old apple tree low and round, trunk so squat you guess the rest is standing underground. Sunken barn beside the road, waving boards cut short by fire, or lowered by the years. Apples tart and dry, building falling down, along the graveyard road just…
Lopping Them Off
Persimmons proclaim their youth when bitterness puckers our jowls. Few mature into sweetness. The unskilled arborist prunes the branches, partially severed, kerfs collapsing, tearing bark from the trunk. Decay enters into unclean cuts. Stubs sprout suckers and obscure the tree’s interior from sunlight. At…
