Cheri L. Jones, Poet

A few weeks ago I met Cheri Jones at a four-woman reading at Osondu Bookstore in Waynesville (see 8/24/08 post). Her reading from her recently self-published book moved me a great deal, and I am happy to present some poems from that book, CHAINS.

For more of Cheri's work, I'd encourage you to go to her website (just click above on her name). You may either order her book from her or find it at Malaprop's and Accent on Books. Or urge your local bookstore to stock it.

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meet Red . . .



Red's world ended in a gunshot.

That's when everything began.

The day his Pop died shot,

little Red became a man.



Evil exploded, whistled, popped.

Shocked Red felt its fatal blast.

Their wagon shuddered, stopped.

His father's life passed, passed fast.



Red heard sweet Willie's anguished scream.

Time slowed. Strength melted away.

Neighbor Frost (in Red's dream)

turned his horse, then sped away.







bliss



A lone jay wings

across the hazefiltered pink of dawn.

You can hear moss

growing in the lingering gray damp.



Cling to this moment of ecstasy

as it changes in seconds

and disappears forever.







ruminations . . .



Maggie hugged her knees

wishing she could ride

a big ferris wheel

up into those clouds

(cotton candy clouds)

and sticky her face

with sweetspun pink fluff.



Maggie hugged her knees

wishing lots of things.

Twilight descended.

She listened tensely

to hushed bickering,

looking for fireflies,

waiting for fireflies.



Their yard was all mud -

no grass, no driveway.

Their car loomed large there,

a shadowy threat.

In the car time dies.

After a prayer at

eighty miles an hour,

the blurred world whirls by.



While Daddy bellows,

". . . and He watches me,"

his rough calloused hands

grab, hit, pinch, twist, bruise,

welt, humiliate.

Is Dan's God watching

when the car swerves on?