Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Domestic Bodies
    Domestic Bodies
    Domestic Bodies
    Ebook86 pages24 minutes

    Domestic Bodies

    By Jennifer Ruth Jackson

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Domestic Bodies delves into the physicality of mundane and life-altering moments as told by a narrator disabled from birth. This collection deals with themes of cancer, family, death, disability, and resilience. Many of these poems don't end happily but leave the reader with a sense of life continuing on...regardless.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherQuerencia Press, LLC
    Release dateOct 23, 2023
    ISBN9798869339560
    Domestic Bodies
    Author

    Jennifer Ruth Jackson

    Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fictionist who resides in Wisconsin. She creates greeting cards, champions other disabled creatives, paints, or plays video games with her husband when not writing. Follow her on Twitter: @jenruthjackson

    Related to Domestic Bodies

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Sep 1, 2022

      I whooshedthrough the party. I grewa set of invisible hands. I was flower girlto the Commonwealth where lovers danced a dancecalled the snowdrift. Sugar mapleshelicoptered samarasin my glass. The dogs slackenedin their webs of shade. A democracyof cl

      2 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jul 1, 2022

      The embers of a Thousand YearsUncovered by the HandThat fondled them when they were FireWill stir and understand——from Emily Dickinson’s “1383” Remember when we hurriedourselves into the evening’s sacral blaze: Our coal-covered bridal gownsdrenched i

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Eternal Adventure

      Jun 29, 2021

      The Eternal Adventure
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      Cricket League

      Sep 1, 2020

      Cricket League
      7 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      I would have booked her departureby overnight express buther leaving was by slow trainmaking all the stops. Another woman over 1,001 nights expressed byunfinished stories her silent plea—More time.Pulling out all the stops sheconjured until a king’s

      3 min read

    • Article

      Getting Started

      Aug 26, 2022

      Getting Started
      3 min read

    • Article

      Seven Poems

      May 1, 2023

      There was a boy even stranger than I waswho’d call me in the eveningto see if I’d come to Scouts. Something in mehesitated. Then one morning during eighth grade English we got hall passesand did it in a stall in the bathroomtaking turns over the john

      3 min read

    • Article

      Fragrant

      Jan 18, 2022

      Fragrant
      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • Article

      All This Blood and Love

      Nov 22, 2017

      All This Blood and Love
      6 min read

    • Article

      Seven Poems

      May 1, 2022

      Seven Poems
      2 min read

    • Article

      Same River Twice

      Feb 3, 2022

      Same River Twice
      8 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2019

      Santo Jesus, did you have a jeweled number?Did you play spin-the-bottle in your day?What colors and configurations of glass? I imagine there were no remedies for cleft palatesbut that people loved their penned animals:brushed their fur and picked the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Rooted

      May 10, 2019

      Rooted
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Periodic Stranger: When exile becomes home.

      Dec 12, 2013

      My roots are in a hilltop village west of Matera, where rabbit and boar run riot in the fields. Figs, apricots, and pears hang in heavy clusters, at eye-level and within easy reach. There, the local girls are famous for their calves, made firm and st

      21 min read

    • Article

      The Periodic Stranger

      Mar 2, 2017

      My roots are in a hilltop village west of Matera, where rabbit and boar run riot in the fields. Figs, apricots, and pears hang in heavy clusters, at eye-level and within easy reach. There, the local girls are famous for their calves, made firm and st

      21 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      the Bradford Pears, green-and-white globes of my girlhoodwhose smell I’ve tried to name for years, settling on piss, but walking by a row of them on my way to the grade school,I thought baking soda. Junk trees, those spring debutantes stinking in the

      2 min read

    • Article

      Any Given Day

      Mar 29, 2021

      Any Given Day
      11 min read

    • Article

      The Way Back Home

      Apr 30, 2022

      Morning light in Sydney has a quality of powdered gold, spilt celestial talcum. It gets up the nose. The streets seem to have nothing to think about other than parking and shopping, violence a concept from another hemisphere. The calm seems deliberat

      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      How slow is all of this dying? Across the county linea fossil in the making, off-road exhaling last lightin nightmud. A small cat in a steel trap. Pendulous sparrows preen. Holding on for the last bluedark nightwe ate fruited scabs off each other’s m

      4 min read

    • Article

      An Open Palm

      Apr 14, 2022

      An Open Palm
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Secretion

      May 5, 2022

      The Art Of Secretion
      8 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Domestic Bodies

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Domestic Bodies - Jennifer Ruth Jackson

      Domestic Bodies

      Jennifer Ruth Jackson

      A book with moon and clouds Description automatically generated with low confidence

      Querencia Press

      Chicago Illinois

      QUERENCIA PRESS

      © Copyright 2023

      Jennifer Ruth Jackson

      All Rights Reserved

      No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

      No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with the written permission of the author.

      Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

      ISBN 978 1 959118 56 5

      www.querenciapress.com

      First Published in 2023

      Querencia Press, LLC

      Chicago IL

      Printed & Bound in the United States of America

      CONTENTS

      The Pain of Starting

      Compartmentalization

      Ritual at Water’s Edge

      Underwater

      Waterway Sojourn

      How We Grow Up

      After the Climb

      Muscle Memory

      Solitary Animals

      Ode with Ellipses

      Play House

      Equidistant

      I'd Rather be Dead Than in Your Shoes

      Preparations for the Family Dinner

      Matriarchal Generations

      The Bird at My Father’s Funeral

      The Fire

      How to Survive a Colossal Mishap

      Diagnosis Prelude

      Removal

      Recurring Fear

      Thoracotomy in Eden

      You on the Palate

      Agony and Mass

      Architect of the Throne

      Unrepentant

      Prickles

      Drowned, Carved Stones

      Reflection on the Mortality of Beasts

      Capsize

      Grief Tickles like a Hammer

      Rite of Passage

      Absentee Father

      Lignin

      Plagues of Egypt

      Winged Monarch

      Severing Scars

      Taillights

      Those Who Inherit

      Bandanas

      If Only I'd Spoken to the God in My Rearview Mirror

      Televangelist

      The Word is Disabled

      Bedbound

      Follow the Light

      You Want Me (to Perform Pain)

      Target Audience

      The Year is a Century

      Update

      Mr. Dictionary

      Poem for My Mother

      Disenchantment Mask

      Themed Hotel on Aspen Street

      Refractory Grains

      Another Failed LDR

      The Night He Cheats

      Bibliophile

      The Meaning of Bibliomancy

      Honey

      Unobstructed View

      Tyranny

      Casualties

      Sacrament of Loss

      I’m a Ghost, Myself

      Edible Blossoms

      Misdirection

      Extravagance

      To the Nines

      Elegy for My Sanity

      Capricorn & Cancer

      Astronomy in Time

      Splashes of Color

      Funeral Weather

      Qualitative Humanity

      My Final Farewell

      Individual Acknowledgements

      Acknowledgement of First Publication

      For my husband:

      I couldn’t roll through this life without you.

      You are my home.

      The Pain of Starting

      The hill is a cockeyed breast

      Worn smooth by God & other travelers

      Traversed by bicycle with bald tires

      & half a deck of spoke-tickled cards

      Head straight for home, momma said

      But that's a thousand miles plus

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1