[POETRY]

[03/30/26]

Sure Foot Ordinary Time

Six Poems by Madeleine Jennings

Sure foot ordinary time

I am drifting toward the other 
months I am sinking in this mud
because I stopped to watch the trees 
they are creaking toward the way
I am going where you go but I am 
minding my feet the stones are sharper 
here they are tipping 
toward the new I am breaking 
my legs I am getting 
to the point it is 
a half a mile away

The buzzing

Summer was the same for a quarter of a century or longer counting

melted years everyone reduced to their first kindness a suffering

that they share spilling into each other spent minds cracked

open to everything moved by everything

moved by the words thank you baby in this heat

that is the origin and the death arise thy light is gone

The labors

At this juncture the air 
is cool. Someone coughs and 
spits. The hard made world snaps 
where it should. Beneath the 
weight here. Swung to the next. 
Quiet as the distance. 
Lady finds the passage
deep and we have seen the
river. So far we fall
and longer is the rest

Santa Catarina

I saw the blue tile when I left
the train and it made me want to 
talk. My shoulders went exposed
to church, before the sweating
fearers of god. Their limp fans 
swatted the air, sending prayers
lamely around. Kneeling in the worn 
pew, I counted out my dead and muttered
the usual with my eyes closed. While I made
the frenzied appeals of a child, there 
it was quiet enough to trace
how my mind had changed. I bowed 
toward the believers 
shifting in their seats.

The cheapening

None of it seems like it was long ago like it was 
the spit has dried the food has dried
a year passes and everything happens everything 
pools remember it like a pinch remember 
the whole of the year the heater clangs each year the heater
opens its spout and there is a fountain for a moment a fountain for
the bedroom how quick it is and how 
it has to burst it gets loud it has to

Everyone loses the ones they love

Here I am as I was curled behind the driver’s seat knowing

immense green beauty and considering the frankness 

of death within churning clouds and birds of prey.

MADELEINE JENNINGS is a writer from New York.