A bride is not mouth and finger;
she is not footfalls and keys
nor smolder nor the fortress of tulle and feather,
not tongue, not an amnesiac, nor a ringed exit;
she is not a laughing kitchen of oil and milk,
nor a funeral
nor bracelets and hairpins,
she is not the quiver and the pitch;
she is not the stature of devils,
not the breastplate of afternoons,
not dread and insomnia,
not hen or egg;
the bride could never be the tureen or the charger plate;
she is not corbels and prayers,
nor the sheet music
nor the watering or wrist,
she is not the blade;
she is not Mayakovsky;
she is not Hopper in Truro;
she will not be harlequin
nor the rose period
nor will she be lashes and darling.
Didi Jackson’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Green Mountain Review, The Common, Café Review, Passages North, and Sierra Nevada Review, among other publications. Her manuscript Almost Animal was a finalist for the 2015 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize offered by Persea Books and a semifinalist for the 2015 Orison Poetry Prize. Her chapbook Slag and Fortune was published by Floating Wolf Quarterly in 2013. She divides her time between Florida and Vermont, teaching humanities at the University of Central Florida and poetry and the visual arts at the University of Vermont.
