Janet Jennings
The Point of Contact Recedes Indefinitely
voices First there was the low voice of a late-night FM deejay and the music. John coltrane maiden voyage miles’ brew sarah bessie rainy nights rants and scratchy bluegrass. Sounds beamed down from another star through hot yellow coils that glowed in the dark in my room. out of the coils In an isolated fold of the Appalachians, people once sang in place of speaking. Only one song sung by the last remaining man lives on, a tinny field recording. suspended I took the blue curtains down, removed the screen, and left the window wide. Would they come for me? then silent A man arrived who used words as magic tricks. I could so easily fall, he said. We want what we think we can’t have. He vanished into his black top hat with the tap of a white- tipped wand. obsessions Saxophone screams, modal trumpet, sad lady singers, blues shouts, accounts of 19th century explorers, cycle of fifths, maps of countries that no longer exist. when I was so hungry, when I couldn’t sleep Music thick around me as I danced, a joy slave. The drug the drug the drug—velocity— thumping loud like a fat bass laid down. Under my fan dance. Phone numbers on damp napkins, passport and a plane ticket inside my beaded bag. I never revealed my name. others, too, pressed on Some masqueraded as monks. Endured intense weather, hunger, the inability to sleep as they climbed eight thousand meters into the sky. And died or were turned back. Some lost feet to frostbite. Some, fingers. Voices shimmer high on the Tibetan plateau. toward the blue peninsula I toss myself, a loose net, blurring into and out of the sky. only some are chosen Whittled to a frayed navy duffel, light on the shoulder, hip bones sharp. I fan a blue book of visas and smudged stamps. A packet of creased maps and chord charts unspools. back to the blue room Things left that are no longer. First star. A tall man with a saxophone blows a lullaby of ghosts. I lean into the blue notes. Waves fill the hollow places.
Janet Jennings lives in San Anselmo, California, with her husband and twin daughters. For twenty years she owned and ran Sunspire, a natural candy manufacturing company. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Agni, Apalachee Review, Atlanta Review, The Bitter Oleander, Bryant Literary Review, California Quarterly, Connecticut Review, Limestone, Pennsylvania English, Poet Lore, Runes: A Review Of Poetry, and Sierra Nevada Review, among others.
