Jenner, CA by Jay Deshpande | Poetry Magazine https://www.poetryfoundation.

org/poetrymagazine/poems/159607/jenner-ca

Jenner, CA
BY JAY DES HPA N D E

We stay in a room the ocean accepts

as its accompaniment. Picture-frame window, one
bright line across it. Crashing waves
heard through the insulation as a continuous loop
in a film about apocalypse. Last night
the party, the ungentleness of love
of loving your friends, of loving too much
what you think you are to your friends.
Through the insulation, I know
the kelp beds float red and slick and competent.
The drugs wear off slowly, aria
in a cavernous theater. To feel or to stop feeling
I would give everything. When I get up today
I will go outside and walk
the cliffs’ edges, remembering a kind of script
for wilderness and sadness. I’ll watch
sunset’s thickened golds and purples
let everything growing be not
just green, but what it is: wet
from within.

Source: Poetry (March 2023)

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Jenner, CA by Jay Deshpande | Poetry Magazine https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/159607/jenner-ca

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