Jennifer Phillips
Jennifer Phillips came across borders early in life and is now a bi-national lifelong poet living on Cape Cod, grateful for this Wampanoag ancestral territory. Phillips’ work has appeared in over 100 journals and 2 chapbooks: Sitting Safe In the Theatre of Electricity (iblurb.com, 2020) and A Song of Ascents (Orchard Street Press, 2022), with a 3rd, Sailing To the Edges (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.) Her collection is Wrestling with the Angel, (Wipf and Stock Pub., 2025) Phillips had two poems nominated Pushcart Prize in 2024.
Still Practicing My Scales
I am wringing the darkness out of my clothing
out of my bones, even out of my heart
to make room for hope.
Skating pond of sky,
calm grey wing over me
as if to say, “Just try. We all fall.”
Earth does not shame us
when we offer our amends
but welcomes them as seeds. Only some will grow.
O neighbor, you are more
complicated, unpredictable.
Earth isn’t holding grudges
just consequences for us all.
I’m studying how to mix the mortar,
hold the trowel, carry the hod,
how to lay the wall and tump it true.
Meanwhile it is snowing in May.
We left the courtyard of innocence long ago.
Now, I lay the mousetrapped victim out
gently on the lawn for the winter-thinned crows,
aiming for a modicum of balance
and my heart undefended on its half-shell.
I’m practicing happiness, learning its key signatures,
watching the baffled squirrels test the feeder
that their own weight closes, wishing them
a few fallen grains for their effort.
I’m a bumbler, too. I’m sorry. Here’s what I scatter for you.
