Jane Springer
Jane Springer Poems
Who made the banjo sad & wrong?
Who made the luckless girl & hell bound boy?
Who made the ballad? The one, I mean,
...
This is the last 2 a.m. song fit for poling a johnboat through the swamp
so we may glide, quiet enough, to catch frogs with our hands.
It's the year Robertlee can't afford a suit to take me to prom.
...
Who made the banjo sad & wrong?
Who made the luckless girl & hell bound boy?
Who made the ballad? The one, I mean,
where lovers gallop down mountain brush as though in love—
...
When they told us Don't speak until spoken to, we grew
ears the size of corn.
...
I was born in a Tennessee sanatorium hours after my mother's father died & I know
how the womb becomes a salt-sea grave.
I was born in the last seconds of small crops & small change rained down on the
collection plate's felt palate & I know
...
We should all be
so sure the check's in the mail & the cash in the bank & the bank
in the black—forgive me the promises I took back:
...
That shell of our house in Calvary, Georgia no longer reminds me
of the porch—old couch & crush of blackberries,
empty-paned windows, cracked board of Lady Day's voice thrown
into the musk-dirt yard where we danced—
...
I write you on a host of unseen things: The fine impression of bones
dissolved in the face of a stone—
on tendrils of incense allemanding through the first ambrosial jasmine,
verdant & white-starflower spring.
...
Jane Springer Biography
Jane Springer (born Lawrenceburg, Tennessee) is an American poet. She won a 2010 Whiting Writers' Award. She graduated from Florida State University with a PhD in creative writing. She is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Hamilton College. She was a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Dear Blackbird won the 2006 Agha Shahid Ali Prize.)
The Best Poem Of Jane Springer
Murder Ballad
Who made the banjo sad & wrong?
Who made the luckless girl & hell bound boy?
Who made the ballad? The one, I mean,
where lovers gallop down mountain brush as though in love -
where hooves break ground to blood-earth scent.
Who gave the boy swift words to woo the girl from home,
& the girl too pretty to leave alone? He locks one arm
beneath her breasts as they ride on - maybe her apron comes
undone & falls to a ditch of black-eyed-susans. Maybe
she dreams the clouds are so much flour spilt on heaven's table.
I've run the dark county of the heart this music comes from - but
I don't know where to hammer-on or to drop a thumb to the
haunted string that sets the story straight: All night Willie's dug
on Polly's grave with a silver spade & every creek they cross
makes one last splash. Though flocks of swallows loom - the one
hung in cedar now will score the girl's last thrill. Tell
me, why do I love this sawmill-tuned melancholy song
& thud of knuckles darkening the banjo face?
Tell me how to erase the ancient, violent beauty
in the devil of not loving what we love.
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