Harmonic

Jenny Gillespie

Slide the voice under hers, two mismatched wheels, see how long it can go.
Good to erode, to be the rust today, leave the blue fume to the nightingale.

I suggest winter harmonica players, the obvious fools underground.
I suggest we tease out the drowned, off-key and softer.

Two mismatched wheels can understand loneliness,
all the misfires of the self, together. Nothing is airtight.

Jenny Gillespie lives in Chicago where she works as an editor for Cricket Magazine Group, a children’s publisher. She has a master’s in poetry from the University of Texas, where she won the Keene Award in poetry and was a Michener Fellow.

“My favorite porch…house-sitting in summer on Avenue G in Austin – white rocking chair, Lone Star beer and a fat orange cat in my lap, watching evening heal the scorching days.”