I wash around the wound on your back, press my fingers and rub around the cut, flat and long, like the road you needed to take home. After the accident I wanted to say, let this be a road to take you far away from California, broken elbows and promises from bad men, friends who […]
Jessica Turney
JESSICA TURNEY was raised in Madera, California and graduated with her MFA in Poetry from Fresno State. She has been published in NELLE, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, and was a finalist in Frontier’s OPEN prize. She also received the Ernesto Trejo Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Jessica currently lives in Fresno with her partner and their two cats, Minerva and Zucchini.
Wound
Elegy for Irene
by Jessica Turney
I. She can’t speak, hasn’t worn her dentures for months, but her mouth moves in rotation, lips pressed, she begs with her eyes, as if she can negotiate to stay in this hospital bed, her eyes blue as fire, the fire I see flicker from her stove, where I smell cornbread pancakes, syrup turning hot […]
