White Print Inc

by JodiAnn Stevenson

She will have a baby.
She will paint the kitchen bridal rose and brazil nut with him
in the middle of the night.

He will bring her a tiger lily the morning after their first one-night stand
which took place in a field of tiger lillies.

He will be the one to catch the baby as it slips from her.
She will have a baby.

He will shake awkwardly when he proposes to her
She won’t know if this is due to cold or fear.

He will call her to say he couldn’t wait to call her.
These things won’t necessarily happen in this order.

She will not be able to stand herself.
She will have a baby.

He will send her pornographic audio so they can mutually masturbate
while 2000 miles apart. They will decide that day to end it.

He will make her strawberry smoothies for breakfast.
She will have another baby.

He will cry on the telephone
actually begging her not to end it.

They will both cry when they find out about the pregnancy.
They will not know if this is due to happiness or fear.

She will have the baby
and the second baby
and he will sing those babies to sleep.

by JodiAnn Stevenson

behind the naked bathroom door
I sputter erratically /
a broken lightbulb hanging over
a damp hole in the muddy earth
leftover
from our son’s careless digging /
& you ask a question
through my fangs
about whether or not
you can sit with me
to watch the enormous bear
crash around in my chest /
the blank stare
the breath
& voice
of a drunk
slamming
against the pavement /

& when you go away
I’m still alone /
heavy bag of garbage
swollen
with the points
of broken things

by JodiAnn Stevenson

for those Americans “unaffected” by Katrina and her aftermath

Leaves float downriver, disconnected, downwater disjointed, disinfected,
under bones or shapes that look like bones and bits of black earth empty

while a strange choir is singing, threatening the landscape with repulsion
& equilibrium made by human hands. Things on top of things – things

that aren’t very happy and what is the point? Initial repulsion. The nature of power –
cellophane bags, radios, contact paper – any of these pieces – would you stop and look?

Would you? Tell yourself and turn yourself around. It is your job to police the situation
where people are working so hard to hear each other speak the snake impression of

other angels, other gods, other times they hated to learn what death
has to do with joy – you’re not sure – and aren’t you lucky not to know.

by JodiAnne Stevenson

weaken me in the knees with all the need of our knowing
and know me weak and needy, my knees as soft as elm branches
branching out into need under the elms, soft and weak, which we know

are just a gift of measured moments we thought we’d mastered
in flight where we master our giving and measure our thoughts in just moments
when our wings are mastered by the measure of fleeting thoughts

such as I am a lively animal who lusts against the lull of this world
and the world lusts after such animals living against the lull of the pulse
and my pulse is a world of animals, always lulling against lusting

for the grass which begins its escape in the great birth of its being
while its being begins a great birth and we escape to wake in the grass
and as we wake, always beginning in the birth of the grass, we escape

our great being. You do. You do
make me weak.

by JodiAnne Stevenson

Baby’s got it good for the fire
and the lightning against his skin

I let him in as much as he wants
but don’t even begin to tell me

baby got some new way of knowing
what I’m about and opening me

like some picture of a flower not a flower
exactly but what he thinks he wants to see

I let him do it because he’s baby
and the good fire of his lightning skin

says touch but I is only a picture of a flower
not the actual flower under the tree

in the forest with hanging mossy green
to eat up dew and sunlight

I is only a painting of that flower
not the real flower itself wet and unclipped

don’t even know how I supposed
to know how to be that real flower

when I been told to be the picture
and I want to be a good picture

because good pictures get good babies
but when good baby opens me he opens a picture

of me not me myself then his fire
good or not is also only a picture of a flame

burning eternally
with no setting me on fire.