2 Poems

Northern Flight

— for B

Green blooms

in the downturned corner

of your eye

you stare into

dust. Underneath the sun

gathering like

static on a

screen. Black pepper

thrown against

wind tilting

clouds. The trail vanishes

and we’re at

the edge of

shadows or something

insistent. No

sound, then only

rushing above us. Biting

through our ears.

If those are

bats. You take my hand.

They’re birds.

Everything is

clamor. Your neck slopes

your hands

magnetize my

shoulders. We stop staring

and gaze.

After the Last Days of Winter

Coffee humbling the quick-boil

flame. Trains at 6 am break the

paths of Jersey wind. All season

the wind’s been high

rupturing stillness in Central

Park. Canopies of sugar maple and

latticed oak leaves once

serene and dutiful

now dip

splinter light and toss

themselves against

the sky. I used

to watch the wind. Full breaths

heaving not just in

treetops—around spires

through galaxies

of street dust. Looking now,

I feel the graveled knot below

my rib cage tighten. Young

leaves line the sewer

still green as they curl

and I’m ripped through for a moment

of window gazing. I know

you’re not sleeping. Pale blue

light yellowing your face,

your brow slipping into

a different atmospheric pressure.

Eleven months

another new season. Five weeks

ago I saw my first budding

crocus. “The fried egg

daffodils!” Your hand locked

into mine

drew me against

your grey peacoat. If

I could hold the world

wind-ravaged in my hand

I’d put it back together for

you leaf by leaf.

Stephanie Jones is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant and a Mediterranean Jersey girl. She has bylines in The New York Times, HuffPost & elsewhere. Her poems appear/are forthcoming in The Santa Fe Literary Review, New Feathers Anthology, The Inflectionist Review, Entre: Magazine of the Arts, Nulla, Pine Hills Review, Reverie Magazine & elsewhere, and as a commission for Blue Note Records.