for the seven daughters Jenny
1
Little beard come listen to me
tell me a story
about your childhood village
No one is left now
at the right hand of the needy
and I want to punch the walls
of my penthouse to release
some misery I have stapled
this paper flower to your mouth
when I feel lonely I speak to you
about betrayal and defeat
The linen. The coat. The linen
2
Now I will be my father
throwing pennies
into the deep end of a pool
My body was an enemy
and object of shame
I could not stand
to see reflected. He had hired
someone to build this pool
and this man took the money
and went to Mexico
and we had a big muddy hole
I dug out soft black pamphlets of shale
and cracked them open in my dirty hands
leaf leaf leaf blank
At last the pool was With long mirrors
running down the whole right wall
in which we can behold
Their guardians, who are also their owners
They are something twofold the king, the kind
both objects of utility
and depositories of value
a physical form and a value form
Now I will leave you to your poverty
and go study yoga in India
Now I will marry a rich engineer
and have one daughter
as he wants a second
one to go with the first
Now I will go help women
or victims of war
or both at once. Surely they
will be more grateful
But I learned to dive. Glorious
swoop inheld
breath
all mine. For pennies
3
Sleep, get up. Sleep
seep, git. But bring
your notebook
Just in case
the crazy ones weren't wrong
about increasing the total joy
(But it's my money!)
treasonous
flippant attitude
of plenty to trust
that goodness stands
the king, the kind
They are something twofold
I only sink
into sadness. No one wants
to learn Polish. But how joyless
and depressed and sad and nearly defeated
this made me!
I went to photograph
the kiosk of chandeliers
Celebration bubbles away
I cannot rescue even a napkin
or a shrub
The linen. The coat. The linen
The liar wants money
From me, hopeless salad
of lyrical narcissism
Believe me
dear citizen
Your devoted
Karl Marx
4
Bluejay forsythia why'm I so set against it
except it's where I'm from
Romeo escaping the city for ruined abbeys
became freckled Olaf eating watermelon
wars very far away
To nature then
because houses are boring
seen from above in miniature patterns
or bland flags up close
of brick or aluminum siding
Instagram
Blue jay
forsythia
Parallel lines never meet
smack it up
Actual poverty is not romantic
smack it
wolves and bears and birds
Indianapolis
carriage wheel factory
John Muir turned his back on
and walked to the tip of Florida
146 years later is it so exciting
dear citizen
to put the word asshole in a poem?
Blue jay asshole forsythia
The coat the linen. If you have two coats
Remove from poems: trees flowers water
other than those comprising bodily fluids
Chaleco salvavidas, calyx of exosphere
pocked with small rocks burning up
before they reach the earth
Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny
(but only three lived
to adulthood)
squalor of London bad
for lungs
Believe me
Your devoted
Moor
has an asshole
and also he's being one
5
Spruce quartz rocks
gull flower branch
Why should I pay
for anyone someone
should pay for me, treat me
like a flower, buy me
and make a baby in me
I am the sky, sea, or earth
the pregnant hills at Bolinas
just starting to green
Or a woman--just
for good riddance
my cheap heart hucked
into the center of the fight
against the moors, Whupp!
silver casket gleaming
I hope you can afford
someone to wipe yr ass
when yr 90. This gasp
delicately larded
in severe anxiety
and dealt a fart
a skinny fart in the elevator
It is religious (the elevator)
It only works if you swear
in the name of the orphaner,
the closer, widest manacle and uprooter of star-rictus
Looking up, playing
pale boy as bell
majesty of the unwedded, smarting
burning chrysanthemum-
liner, mantle, threshold
(stop barking)
my lovely assistant
whom I utterly mistrust
sits in the bath
convexing Life. Womb. Life
his steamy belly
in and out. According to my credo
everything is just a prelude
to his leaving me. One by one
in my dreams everyone is leaving
music a perpetual quarrel
with origins and returning
soused. Everyone doing
according to form
whipped and not crying out
hung swelling from trees
later sprayed with fire-hoses
hosed down and icing up
in January Detroit Ford
Highland Park plant
five dollars a day
for the speedup
now they call it The Ford
thin men padding their shoulders
pale men rouging their cheeks
I will not imagine a doe
as the emblem of every victim o
what does it mean my dream
of prosperity were you waiting
a bandit to extort from me
my mother's diamond ring
before sleep repent
take their miseries into
your chest entangles
and she tries to please it
to repeat some of its names
the caged birds as amulets
of breath finally crying out
Believe me
6
But he beats me the boy is saying
standing before a man seated
in a clean shirt. The sturdy boy
is black with soot. A righteous bellowing
ensues. The same exchange
pins these soldiers here
sweating. Flood of solace
wholly absent. Not even a howl stirred
inside us, nudged by a white cane tapping
Last night another round of killing
stray dogs, you could hear
them yelping till dawn
Who dragged you
through all this teleology
to live in feints of smaller
and smaller amounts of money
food money shelter money
a dog nosing a pricked can
for the spiraled out-dribble
no regeneration sleep lacking
all forethought scapulae heavy
petals of clay beneath the river
he sleeps, his paralysis thickens
Then he is moving
through a city alone and hungry
language breaking usages
seated in a clean shirt
a bitch with saggy belly
slacked out onto the sidewalk
a monologue about ferns
But isn't this an alibi: always the first man
Grass rocks water (O poem already!)
crickets spruce seaweed lichen boulder
my cheap heart hucked
gleaming, and that was the last
anyone saw of it / smack it up
and that was the last / smack it
whether the tiny commandoes
swarming down ropes on TV are real
or the story of an ant towing a fine thread
through a conch toward a drop
of honey -- Jenny Jenny
Jenny Jenny
Jenny
imprint
in pale damp clay
of a small bird's
baroness feet
Believe me
It is too complicated
to explain
when that whistle broke
the Lord's business
into a scream
Jenny
why I am in despair
of ever being
loved Jenny
and cannot send you money
Jennifer MacKenzie started reading Marx for the first time this April in Cairo and then Doha, where she became convinced that Qatar is the ideal place from which to consider crystallizations of capital and value in the early 21st century. Some of her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Forklift, Ohio, Lungfull, and Typo. A chapbook, "Distant City", is forthcoming this July, and a full book of poems (title yet-to-be-determined) will be published as part of Fence Books' Modern Poets series next year. She lives for the time being in Istanbul, Turkey.