The March Selected Poet is

Jean Jones

Please feel free to email Jean at: jjones138@ec.rr.com

IN THE END

In the end,
all that's left
is a hasty phone number
scrawled on a piece of paper,
the smell of a musty bathroom,
a strand of hair
and a used bedroom
despite the best
of intentions.

THE POET'S DEATH

It comes to a point
When you can’t feel it anymore,
When old passions and new dreams
Are the same
And there’s nothing inside but routine and loneliness
When old poems stare and echo
like ghosts in the mirror
And dead people in photographs,
And you try and you try
But all you have left to write about
Is the ghostly presence of a vague feeling
Once felt but you can’t feel it
Anymore

AFTERMATH

A dead soldier among dozens
was being escorted by the Angel of Death
when he turned to ask her a question:
"Who are you he asked?  What is your purpose?"
The soft white alabaster eyes of the Angel of Death
flashed for a second before she responded:
"I am the origin of dreams.  I am the first thought.
As long as men dream of me, I will exist.
My purpose is to carry out the desires of men,
and you, you are the result of the desires of men.
Now come with me."

EVE

I knew
How it would feel
If she

Wrapped her small body
Around me,
Draining whatever heat

I still have
After swimming
In that water for hours,

Chasing her,
Watch how
Her arms reflected the sun

When they twisted
In the air
Like snakes,

And when we came back,
Our cold bodies tired,
She would place

Her dripping body
Next to mine,
Her lips covered with salt.

WHAT REMAINS?

What remains?
The pyramids, the oceans, the mountains and the moon.
After the advent of the dinosaurs, the fall of the Roman Empire,
man's first flight, and the fall of the British Empire,
what remains?
The pyramids, the oceans, the mountains, and the moon.
All the rest are filled with the bleached bones of immortality.

Jean Jones received an M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University. In 2008 St. Andrews Press published a collection of poems entitled The Birds of Djakarta.

Jean is also co-editor of the online poetry magazine Word Salad which can be found HERE