The Only Thing That Matters

By Kim Jensen

The poems in Jensen’s powerful new collection have the speed and instability of linguistic particles traveling outward from a primal collision: light with darkness, oppression with liberty, doubt with certainty, and faith with its impossible Other. Occupying a tense, fugitive space, the poems derive from the ideas and vocabulary of radical poet and novelist Fanny Howe into startling new formulations. Compact and evocative, Jensen’s lyrics are marked by the intensity of their moral commitment to matters of the world and matters of the heart. This is an important work, offering glimpses of what might be possible—if only the love, faith, and compassion that sustain us could themselves be sustained.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Release date: May 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9780815650539

Book preview

Otherness and a Wilderness

I had always planned to live

on the run, now I’m a stranger

running to you alone—

the last great expert

standing, red.

You who argues for nothing and bows

to nothing and wears energy and feathers—

such fountains of light

—and who finds the hidden surprises

between home and heaven.

Your name in my mouth

feels cold

and ordinary—like inhaling

something frozen

through the phone.

Go—

now that you have a job.

Anyway, I aspire

to be poor, living

in seedy quarters and to forget

my place

the way a mast might

mid-seayou’ll have years to be alone.

A mirror held up to your homeland

reveals otherness—a hardened people

with a taste for bread

and a taste for freedom. Some lay their faith

in the sacred. Others exchange

faith for fever—for the right

to bear arms is intrinsic

to that space between test

and success—between take back

or wait—

A child was born to us—

all mouth, small hands, and now

my will is like rain—

the secret design of the sea.

I’ll forget hardships, the worm inside

and concentrate on kindness

because she’ll be afraid sometimes

of that dark place with no name.

Socialism exists far away

in an abstract place

that proves the poverty

of mathematics

and magic.

I make wild leaps of thought

or little leaps called prayer.

Held back by a cardinal’s red

designs in winter.

After months in the hills

of Palestine, you returned with lovely lines

new toasts over old wine.

Across that great hole which divides—

say my name, no—fall

here:

I know now never to say goodbye.

Humanity has been struggling so long

I’m tired.

I want to inhale the cold and wake

from all this suffering, smile

discover the old guard gone

and earth’s creatures singing—big and knowing!

Tell me, friend, when the party’s over

will history still oppress us?

The consensus is: life is magic

or a panic of interpretation. The gist’s in a spin.

Ordinary speech seems like a sin

and so does certainty—

since earth’s own emotions

aren’t complete.

A child once offered this:

Home is where the secret is. Then she disappeared

into god’s dark woods.

Now that your skin

is out of