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 One Art, Potomac Review, The Sunlight Press, Gyroscope Review, and Dark Winter Literary Magazine. She is also the author of fifty books for young readers including Smoke at the Pentagon: Poems to Remember (Bushel & Peck, 2023) and Tag Your Dreams: Poems of Play and Persistence (Albert Whitman, 2020). Visit her online at www.jacquelinejules.com

After Months in Transit

Standing by an upstairs window
in a new house stacked with boxes,
I admire a naked tree, its branches
spread upward in a crinoline cage, 
as if waiting for a colorful gown. 

Across the street, a woman walks
a little dog in a red sweater.

A FedEx truck parks at the curb
by a melting mound of snow.

I stay, transfixed, watching
a uniformed man deliver
a package next door.

After months in transit, 
I unpack the luck to arrive.

The Same Terminal

In the radiology waiting room,
waiting for our husbands to return 
from yet another test, she says 
the last year has felt
like a high-speed walkway
in an endless airport.

I understand exactly what she means,
moving through the same terminal,
past one closed gate after another,
metal plates chugging forward
as the chance to stand in one place
with the one I love slips beneath my feet.

Uneventful

Uneventful, Janice often said
on Monday mornings
when I asked about her weekend.
 
I remember her pleased tone,
as if it were a goal achieved.
 
Such satisfaction in the ordinary
seemed odd to me at the time, 
years before I’d received 
any phone calls 
which divided my life 
into before and after.
 
Uneventful: no visit from police. 
No roofs blown off by the wind.
No cars stuck in ditches.
No one-way trips to the ER.
 
Blessings I count now
brushing my teeth
before bedtime.