Jess Burnquist

East as in Love and What I Couldn’t Say

The sun rises in the east, I tell you

Because you are learning how to navigate.

It was easy to feel like the goddess of water in the desert

When you swam in my belly– a nearly revealed secret

And this week a student bemoans the use of couplets—

I think she hasn’t been in love and change the subject.

When I talk about you to my classes it is as an example

Of all that is good but at home I have to temper my pride

Because you are at some sort of apex—muscle and future gleaming

A grasp of privilege and an even deeper awareness of obligation.

You take the wheel, how proud I am when you turn the volume down

The silence irritates you, I know. You ask for a story.

As a graduate student, I mentioned you in my writing

One man said, “Oh god, I’m so sick of mother poems.”

What he failed to understand is how you

Are every poem. Ever.