Pink Jasmine

by Amy Pence

Indelicate:                                hanged, then sometimes burned
its scent that breeds                 children, afterwards
like flesh, climbs and roots                            at the far regions
cloying even                                        in photographs, smiling
pinked tuberous                      one smudged boy in cap
infiltrating—                           it was a spectacle
historical, southern                  this fear that had its glee
even                                        in the hangings, mutilations  

unclassed vatic                                    sexual: one per week, more   
covering the share-cropper’s                                for a century
shack: dense scroll                                       turned in on itself
upon which God leaves                              shame: twisting among
evidence of  aching                          the leaves
Do you see the wings dissolve                                   that scent
                                                                        among us                               


AMY PENCE authored the poetry collections Armor, Amour (Ninebark Press, 2012) and The Decadent Lovely (Main Street Rag, 2010). Her hybrid work on Emily Dickinson [It] Incandescent was a finalist for Tupelo Press’s Snowbound Chapbook Award and the Colorado Prize for Poetry, and her essay on Dickinson and her biographers appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle. She lives with her husband and her daughter in Carrollton, Georgia.