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| Creative Journalism and Essays |
| Fiction |
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JEAN SHEPARD lives in Atlantic Beach, Florida, and teaches Humanities at Florida Community College at Jacksonville. Her poems have appeared in such public-ations as The Tampa Review, NewCollage, Kalliope, Passager, and The Georgetown Review. |
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JEAN SHEPARD
With You
Always the pine forest within
clean, quiet
where one circle of trees is mine to enter
lay my face down
into deep crumbling fragrance
one ear to the sky
one to the ground
wanting to stay
smooth in a circle of myself
knee to chin
eyes closed
always remembering the flash
of green sparklers
sharp against the heart.
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JEAN SHEPARD
On This Side
We climb a flight of stairs
to stand on the porch.
The breeze is slightly chill.
We shift packages, each
reaching for the knob,
but my hand falls back.
Wait a minute, I want to say,
let’s stay a little longer on
this side. See how the sun
separates the leaves, and beads
of water glisten on the wiry
screen. October shines in red
and yellow. Brown spines
of oak leaves are still bordered
with green. We are together,
hearing silly starlings quarrel
over the last palm berries.
Of course it is just a house, ours.
But it’s been lying empty
for a while now. What shadows
have moved across the windows?
What dust has shifted to the floor?
What is remembered there
in the furniture of those silent rooms?
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JEAN SHEPARD
Dinner Party
Purple and yellow flowers
top the dinner table where I preside
and you are a peripheral mote in someone else’s eye
a beam in mine and in my life
a fence post
beyond which the salad is a green smear
the wine a red stain
teriyaki chicken a brown spot on white ground.
Maybe tonight I will yank the beam from my eye
gnaw the chicken thigh
and bone-beat a drum fast and loud
sending you out of my life.
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JEAN SHEPARD
Old House/New House
She saw his back fill the door.
Staying happens by habit,
leaving takes thought, and she
was silent on the subject since
the shift had been over them
for years. Now she watches
the street lamp come on behind
the window, the familiar leaves
shadowing the blinds. How will
the house shape her now with no
stranger’s step in the hall?
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