Jennifer Elise Foerster

Apricots

A light.
A room.
Lakes upon lakes.

The hen’s head, blazing
drops to the mat.

I want orange asters
in my window. I want

to sleep in the straw
of the slant afternoon,
my own head a bowl of apricots.

Were the blood tracks
on the forested overpass
not the antelope’s.

Were the thunder
clouds in my belly
not the dark strokes of men.

There is no man in a tower
with a stopwatch.

Tonight no moon
to break myself against.

A light.
A boat.
An unlit room.

Don’t sleep yet,
I'm rowing toward you.

Bio

Jennifer Elise Foerster is the author of Leaving Tulsa, published by the University of Arizona Press. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, Jennifer is an alumna of the Institute of American Indian Arts and the Vermont College of the Fine Arts. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and is currently pursuing a PhD in English and Creative Writing at the University of Denver.