JAPANESE ARCH BRIDGE CHEMIST REGARDING THE FLASH

by Jnana Hodson

Through unemotional contempt
where the dipping bowl ferments
Emma assumed I’d been spilling Chardonnay
over my watercolor field notes.

I didn’t buy tarot-card insurance
behind a Sumerian bronze disk
no matter what I dominated
in a beaker of green-flame transmutations.

Instead, we distilled wicked superstitions to a formula
resembling a reflecting pool where you spun
torpidly against the shrouded bullfrogs,
free of the paper deck the lady fanned before us.

BATHED IN WHITE LIGHT

by Jnana Hodson

Queen of the Moon, enthroned
atop a white statue
of St. Joseph
in the pelvis of church towers,
both facing the broad lake:

Bless me and the angel with an oboe voice.

More than the dark pigeons, flocking.

So passive, she could not be held.
Elusive, yet essentially
eating away mountains.