Jenny George

Jenny George is a winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize and a recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Lannan Foundation, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she works in social justice philanthropy.

The Artist

A snake lies in the open, dormant

in its sleeve of heat. A gilded orphan

on the sun-warmed dirt, eye-slits ajar,

waiting for the infinite to arrive.

You want to strike it with a stick.

You want an answer to the prayer

that says, Make use of me.

One day the old life simply sheds

its dress and flows through the stones.

Then the future wavers up in you

and stands in your throat like a flame.

— Jenny George