Poems and Texts

“Minor Miracles” by Jasmine Dreame Wagner

Minor Miracles

How many men
roll roulette?
How many women cast
broadcasts spiraling from the city
like light from switchblades

as if a network could form itself
from sky if it had enough
desire to imprint itself into being?

Who will write the manual
How to Save a Man from Drowning?
If love is an uncommissioned artwork.

If light is careful embroidery,
if the pencil shavings of stars
are the tracks of animals

cast from pages of storybooks
in confetti from yesterday’s birthday,
who will sing the songs

of objects?
The sand belongs to no one.
The box store employment applications,

the billboards gold and turquoise
like all that is human
in a motel at twilight:

cigarette burns, the clay colored carpet,
a man’s suit jacket hung in the closet.
On the boardwalk of desire

how many ring
the soul at the desk?

“Minor Miracles” was first published in Listening for Earthquakes (Caketrain).

Jasmine Dreame Wagner

<b>Jasmine Dreame Wagner </b>is an American poet, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. She is the author of <em>Rings</em>(Kelsey Street Press, 2014), <em>Rewilding</em> (Ahsahta Press, 2013), <em>Listening for Earthquakes</em> (Caketrain Journal and Press, 2012), and an e-chapbook, <em>True Crime </em>(NAP, 2014). Her writing has appeared in <em>American Letters &amp; Commentary, Blackbird, Colorado Review, Indiana Review, New American Writing,Verse</em>, and in two anthologies: <em>The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral</em> (Ahsahta Press, 2012) and <em>Lost and Found: Stories from New York</em> (Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood Books, 2009). A collection of hybrid lyric essays on noise, silence, and aesthetics is due out from Ahsahta Press in 2016.
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