Jennifer Rane Hancock

Jennifer Rane Hancock's poems have appeared in several journals, including the Antioch Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Puerto del Sol. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the editors of Third Coast, and was a finalist for the Wabash Prize from the Sycamore Review. She lives in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she serves on the city’s Commission on Arts and Culture and leads a monthly poetry group at the Mesa County Public Library. Jennifer teaches writing and literature at Colorado Mesa University.

 

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childhood and its rattlesnakes

implement: your father’s car key is sharp
enough to cut off the tail of the living

the living you: building lincoln log houses
for palmetto bugs crisp with promise

this crisp house: eggshells and coffee grounds
lure snakes to its pylon boundaries

the eggshell pylons: so fragile you shiver
in your sleep and the storm surge is coming

sleep: fragile in the inexplicably muggy desert
the cacti and bay bush ambivalent

the fragile rattles: lined up by the kitchen sink
proof of your expectation of the coming

 

 

 

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