JENNA JARVIS
AI spring
Self-evident timestamp: foliate head motif, a mask, not a Green
Man. Everything is a movement, free to the public or perpetual
students. Nothing needs monetising this second. Upcycling doesn’t
need to happen economically but, psychologically, is a nice-to-have.
Primally, you know you’ve made it; that’s an autological phrase.
William Morris taken to his logical conclusion. My diploma
stalled in the post, the wait protracted as poppies. You’re hacking
at a wooden frame. Your brother had a wallpaper book from when he
remodelled – dunno, I stayed in the car like you asked – and the foliate
leftovers would look pretty alright in a frame in the usual colour. The backing
isn’t coming loose and you’re growling urrrgh in sincere
frustration, not in mock exasperation with an inevitable
someone. It’s not the end of the world if the chisel slips and I fuck up
my throwing hand. It is if you do. I won’t and I’ll have the diploma to prove it.
The pattern is imperfectly opaque against the backing. You offer
the previous tenancy agreement as verso. I agree that the bite
won’t show through. Training data.
COWARD
Clear the air, couchcrossed, my seating arrangements
front row. You gesticulate and I notice on your innerwest tricep
the wave of flesh you pretend isn't there, you loathe
and fear more than, what, me? Your eyes dart and I
and your Burkean firstfuck property
reek thereof. Everything is French, my cigarettes and your
temperament. My car where you thirdoptioned me
and your perpetual guest, where I remarked
perfectly calmly that you were more
Gallic than gallant, all right before I signed the lease or was
about to, were it not for coldlead footdragging, but did.
Guns kill people like crashes do. They don’t, no, I don’t know, but
sudden deceleration does, you in moody navy against the sofa’s
patterned throws. My ass like these strokes. Unlike your cultivated
everything. I notice your hairline matches
tempers. Mostly mine. Your neighbours
hear everything, so I'm reluctant to leave
the house when they do. So, yes, I'm scared thus a hypocrite
persisting in your living room but
finding a home in my hands for my head because, shortlines
plus forced compounds unexempt, we are and ever
were too old for this shit.
Jenna Jarvis published three poetry chapbooks in the 2010s, including year of pulses (above/ground, 2018). She won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2012 and received an honourable mention for the [erstwhile] Puritan's 2014 Thomas Morton Prize. Jenna completed her MA in English literature at Carleton University in 2022.