Four Poems by Jacqueline Jules

 

  

Tricking the Troll

 

I stand on the other side

longing for the sweet grass

across the bridge.

 

Every time I step forward

the troll jumps out,

thick hairy arms crossed,

giant feet planted wide.

 

He wants me to forget

the grass and the flowers,

to accept barren ground

as all I deserve.

 

Can I trick the troll

into letting me pass?

 

Or better yet, be the biggest

Billy Goat Gruff and bellow:

“I won’t let you, won’t let you,

block my path anymore!”

 

 

What I Learned From My Mother’s Mahogany Table

 

Most people tiptoe their way through life, hoping they make it safely to death.

— Earl Nightingale

If I don’t put the soles

of my feet on the ground

and stop tiptoeing up the stairs

to my death, my life will resemble 

my mother’s mahogany dining table,

hidden beneath a custom-made pad

and heavy linen cloths.

 

She never dared leave it naked,

to enjoy its sheen in the sunlight,

its banded edge of satinwood.

 

She was too afraid of a scratch

from the careless drop of a spoon

or the coil of a child’s notebook.

 

So the table stood covered

in her dining room

as decades dulled the shine

she hoped to preserve.

 

 

Things That Make Me Sigh

 

The loop of options when I call the bank,

none of which offer a live person.

 

The shelf of cereals missing

only the box I came to buy.

 

The note signed with a single letter,

as if I don’t know anyone else

whose first name begins with “B.”

 

And your cane-dependent shuffle,

while I wait by the door, your coat

draped over my arm.

 

It’s so hard to silence my sigh.

 

To stop tapping my toe. To remember.

 

You’re bearing a burden, too.

 

Knees that won’t bend to your wishes

any more than an automated phone system

offering options I don’t want.

 

 

Statistically Speaking

 

While I’m hiding in my house,

afraid to even shop, for fear a wayward breath

in the fruit aisle will break through my vaccine,

a friend calls to say her cousin Jack

had a fatal heart attack at sixty-five.

 

And I’m reminded that Covid

is not the only way to die.

 

There’s fire, flood, condo collapse

in the middle of the night.

 

A bullet could fly through my window.

I could slip in the shower and hit my head.

 

Looking at the numbers,

the odds of falling down the stairs

are significantly greater

than a plane crash.

 

And I’m far more likely

to be struck down by a stroke

than lightning.

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman's Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her poetry has appeared in over 100 publications including The Sunlight Press, Gyroscope Review, One Art, and Route 7. She is also the author of two poetry books for young readers, Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence. (Albert Whitman, 2020) and Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023). Visit  www.jacquelinejules.com