JESSICA GOODFELLOW
November Nocturne
Even planets turn away from the easement of light,
sometimes. Night’s a rehearsal for the orb
and distance of winter, its map-unmaking
and its unmap-making, its failure to ravel
wander from resist. All night the night sounds
like children not breathing. I am afraid
of a thing and its opposite: leaving and not,
subject unspecified. The curtain stirs
though the window is closed. Stars flash
like bees abandoning the hive, humming a lullaby
in drone, in monotone but with the Doppler effect
of a death mask, coming right at you, wind
pulsing around the edges because there is
no mouth-shaped hole, no eye-sized emptinesses.
Jessica Goodfellow's manuscript, The Insomniac’s Weather Report, recently won the Three Candles Press First Book Prize. She has also published a chapbook, A Pilgrim’s Guide to Chaos in the Heartland. Jessica’s work has appeared in Best New Poets 2006 and on Verse Daily and The Writer’s Almanac. A recipient of the Chad Walsh Poetry Prize from the Beloit Poetry Journal, Jessica lives in Japan with her husband and sons. (www.jessicagoodfellow.com)