Impermanence

By Jessica Varin

is the penciled poem
found in a bathroom stall
where someone decided to leave
something more interesting
than a fake phone number
scratched into the metal door.

Wood Chips

By Jessica Varin

You are a mountain of mulch and I am not your king.
       You are ruled by the centipede and the spider.
They do not fear
    suffocation beneath your broad slopes.

I’ve always wanted to play
   on your wood-chip peaks at the paper mill.
Alas, the foreman says I could drown
in an air pocket.     Instead I will watch
the spider climb and witness the centipede
    take it’s throne.

Mountain, you have swallowed
    lesser things than I.

Literary Projects

By Jessica Varin

Is Charles Dickens
on the “urban fiction”
shelf? I doubt it.
Let’s be honest-
he doesn’t belong.

In the minority ghetto,
Sapphire shares shelf space
with Toni Morrison so
white people won’t
have to read about
experiences that don’t correlate.

But who relates to the Bard?
Screw universal themes;
did you use a chamber pot today?

Let’s leave these
literary projects.
We can carpool.