Jackie K. White has published poetry and translations in such journals as ACM, Blackwater Review, Folio, Quarter after Eight, So to Speak, Spoon River, and Third Coast. She has been a fellow at Ragdale, the Virginia Center for the Arts, and the Mary Anderson. She is an editor for the literary annual RHINO and an associate professor at Lewis University. Her PhD in Creative Writing is from the University of Illinois at Chicago where she also completed concentrations Latino/Latin American and Women’s Studies. Two of Jackie's chapbooks were published in 2007, Bestiary Charming by Anabiosis Press and Petal Tearing & Variations by Finishing Line Press.
Guide
Sprouts up heat down and school doors push June
out into another neon meta-bud-green stress:
check the almanac for what to plant under bread moon
or wolf before grown-up hemispheres get you to obsess,
miscueing the tail-fed mouth of the Ouroboros snake.
She’s been on both sides of the moat: silver spoon moot
and mealy crumb trail blown like thumb against cake
flames. She was taught to wish this or that beaut
would find her beautiful too—a grable or garbo,
an archetype, a cliché, a fairy tale, a grim play
of blind-ball masks, half princess-half hobo
hobbling one-sooty-shoed dance. I’ll tell her: turn day
back to witchery, my dear girl: pluck off every rhinestone,
douse yourself with that grit, ground to cologne.
or wolf before grown-up hemispheres get you to obsess,
miscueing the tail-fed mouth of the Ouroboros snake.
She’s been on both sides of the moat: silver spoon moot
and mealy crumb trail blown like thumb against cake
flames. She was taught to wish this or that beaut
would find her beautiful too—a grable or garbo,
an archetype, a cliché, a fairy tale, a grim play
of blind-ball masks, half princess-half hobo
hobbling one-sooty-shoed dance. I’ll tell her: turn day
back to witchery, my dear girl: pluck off every rhinestone,
douse yourself with that grit, ground to cologne.
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