1 of 2 poems by Jessica Fjeld | next »

The Green Leaves

  1. grow and the men go down the stairs. The sun
  2. comes up and the men go out. The corner smells like men.
  3. The windows are dusty, like as not
  4. unlit. In the courtyard a small mural on plywood.
  5. In the mural flowers. White plastic baskets with
  6. tall scrolling handles. The men pick them up and
  7. the men put them down. They sit in chairs,
  8. they put their clothes on and don’t take them off.
  9. The men stand in groups. You can’t catch one alone.
  10. The sun shines down on the west.
  11. All the green plants in shade. All the tall gates
  12. closed up. You can’t tell where the men come out.
  13. Between here and the river there is a lot of dust,
  14. but the building is large and there are
  15. men in every room. The men break the windows
  16. and the windows don’t get fixed. The men go
  17. down toward the river and then come back.
  18. There are chairs in the garden and the men sit
  19. down. In the grass there are smaller fences
  20. around smaller buildings. There are smaller leaves
  21. and paler greens and smaller men in tiny chairs.
About the Author

Jessica Fjeld is the managing editor of jubilat. Her first chapbook, On animate life, was selected for the Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship; her second, The Tide, is forthcoming in 2010 from Pilot Books. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in GlitterPony, Fou, the Boston Review, and Invisible Ear.