The Bookstore
Midas-Touch · Jennifer M. Phillips
$10.00
12×10.5 inches printed on 100% recycled linen paper.
Signed limited edition of 10.
Set in Mrs. Eaves.
Archive-quality glassine envelope included.
Read excerpts
Gold was never what you wanted,
nor to be an alchemist.
Pulling the mangoes apart at breakfast,
juice oozed down your wrists to a standstill.
You transplanted
woodland laurels to the mid-city.
Every dissembling May
they must still be spritzing
forest-scent into your backyard haze
in that other country.
So many years like sheet-music
unfolded, folded back.
I’m remembering your violinist-hands
stroking the tung-oil over
oak bannisters until they were gilded
into furrowed ingots in transom-light.
A few of us were transmuted, too,
precious into metal. Not
what you ever wanted, those
tender pliancies reformed.
Even the air around you lacquered
into a hardening glaze.
Barely touched loves glittering like iced trees
until you loathed the cruelty of the gift
that could not be given back,
the unspendable craze of riches
heaped over your poor heart
that kept praying for the power to change.
nor to be an alchemist.
Pulling the mangoes apart at breakfast,
juice oozed down your wrists to a standstill.
You transplanted
woodland laurels to the mid-city.
Every dissembling May
they must still be spritzing
forest-scent into your backyard haze
in that other country.
So many years like sheet-music
unfolded, folded back.
I’m remembering your violinist-hands
stroking the tung-oil over
oak bannisters until they were gilded
into furrowed ingots in transom-light.
A few of us were transmuted, too,
precious into metal. Not
what you ever wanted, those
tender pliancies reformed.
Even the air around you lacquered
into a hardening glaze.
Barely touched loves glittering like iced trees
until you loathed the cruelty of the gift
that could not be given back,
the unspendable craze of riches
heaped over your poor heart
that kept praying for the power to change.
About the Author
Jennifer M. Phillips is a bi-national immigrant, a gardener, and painter living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Phillips has published poetry in over fifty little poetry journals, including Poetry Pacific, Evening Street, Poem, The Ravens Perch, humanaobscura, Onionhead, Front Range Review, Penine Platform, DASH Literary Review, America, Pensive, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Buffalo Bones, Blueline, Pittsburgh Quarterly, and Orchard Press’s journal Quiet Diamonds.
