Mark Jackley‘s work has appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House Review, Natural Bridge and other journals. His new book of poems On the Edge of a Very Small Town is available for free via email request.

Visitant is featuring a selection of poems from On the Edge of a Very Small Town.

Grace

When I use the word
I’m not thinking of the way you discreetly daub your lips
with a linen napkin in your slender fingers
but how the watermelon,
resembling a misshapen
planet fallen from
the heavens meets the knife
and splits into a dozen
grins and spills its seeds
like black stars.