Jenny Maaketo

One month after your passing,

for Jasper in memoriam

it is still winter            on the highway

the season denudes all

into the look of dead

roots exhumed            in gooseflesh

my rumination over you
      is a ruin of wind &
radio    this absence is
   a passenger
seat i sit in       & you visit

every blink      a window frame

witnesses        the pitch & skein

black birds make         perched as if strung on barren

branches          to decorate a wake     

with lanterns for ravens or crows—no

starlings I think—yes              you—my bird

watcher—       would have known who murmurates

at almost night—        as invitation

to christmas     a winter tree

with lightness              the flock roosts

to share their heat—   &—

the instant i see

the string—what could be you—a light festooned—

we pass            like a shiver on the interstate

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Jenny Maaketo (she/her) is a neurodivergent writer, psychiatric nurse and former professional actress from Austin, Texas. She is currently an MFA poetry candidate at the University of Mississippi, as well as the senior poetry editor for Yalobusha Review. Jenny was a finalist for the 2024 New Letters Editor's Choice Award, a semifinalist for the 2024 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize and received a C.D. Wright Memorial Scholarship to attend the 2024 Poetry Program at the Community of Writers. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Pigeon Pages, Midway Journal, Acta Victoriana, Cherry Tree, The Florida Review, PRISM international and elsewhere. Jenny lives in rural Mississippi with her husband, one-year-old son, five dogs, two cats and lots of love.