Estuary at Tidal Shift
A breath. The flat’s last pull,
highest thirst of low tide.
The heron lifts a mud-thick
foot, angles its sharp head
toward the clicking clams.
Equinox
We’ve passed through
the new growth, ripened
crush of berries on the
tongue, but in the chill
of this dark morning,
acorns dot the soft
moss with nutrition,
and every wild mouth
opens on the fattening
cracking underfoot.
Dovetail
Having made a space,
can I see your softness
and not chisel it away?
In a Bell
Another name for clapper
Is tongue, the striking part
that makes the noise. Scan
the diagram, and so much
else is named a body—
mouth, lip, waist, shoulder,
head—I map you onto this
bell, think of how I might
sustain your resonance,
what in you I want to make
ring, what I want to applaud.
Overnight
The banked coals of my desire
needed only this dry kindling:
the thought of your breath
while shoveling snow.
Jennifer Browne falls in love easily with other people’s dogs. Her chapbook Whisper Song was released in 2023 by tiny wren publishing, and her poems have recently appeared in the Poem for Cleveland anthology; the Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak, 15th Anniversary Volume; Humana Obscura; South Broadway Ghost Society; and One Sentence Poems. She lives in Frostburg, MD.