TORCH
by Kim Jacobs-Beck
Sing “Sunday Kind of Love”
and “Guilty”
on blast
it’s a dry heat
passionate celibacy
smoke, maybe fire
Fall in love on the phone
confess our sins and love of
Etta Patsy
Billie Bonnie
requited-but-impossible
500 miles and
a marriage
Many nights, long distance
your voice slides into me
touches me the way
your tongue will
so so guilty
by Kim Jacobs-Beck
A hardboiled egg, eaten on Easter
I’m standing at the sink with salt and pepper,
carefully removing the shell, sharp
edges yield to reveal the smooth
white, layer over layer, yolk,
yellow and grey, the core.
This is my Easter ritual,
left over from blessed baskets
filled with food, lining church aisles.
Polish grandmothers fussing
with basket linens, careful to expose each item,
required by tradition—
bread, kielbasa, colored eggs,
salt and pepper, sweets, a butter lamb.
Easter communion. Not the body and blood, transmuted;
real food, to be eaten first thing Easter Sunday.
A meal to break the fast, to break
the day. Break the egg, break with the past,
break the winter dark.
by Kim Jacobs-Beck
Summer selfie in
the South Dakota grass
cumulus and sun shadows
below the blue blue blue
This is now.
Back then,
I would have walked to Iowa
on callused feet if I
were prairie wild
But no. Wrote out my love
daily, sublimated
schoolgirl lust,
Find, then lose you, every night.
Now. Beyond the gate,
golden foxtail and garlic chives.
_____________________________________________________
Kim Jacobs-Beck was born just outside Detroit and has lived
in the Midwest for most of her life. A first-year student in Miami
University’s low-residency MFA program, she also serves as
Interim Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of
English at the University of Cincinnati Clermont College. She
holds a Ph.D. from Miami University in British Romantic
Literature. Her work recently appeared in Love & Ensuing
Madness, a collection of poems from Rat’s Ass Review, and
Thank You for Swallowing and is forthcoming in NILVX and
Muddy River Poetry Review.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2017 Next page ►
Sing “Sunday Kind of Love”
and “Guilty”
on blast
it’s a dry heat
passionate celibacy
smoke, maybe fire
Fall in love on the phone
confess our sins and love of
Etta Patsy
Billie Bonnie
requited-but-impossible
500 miles and
a marriage
Many nights, long distance
your voice slides into me
touches me the way
your tongue will
so so guilty
by Kim Jacobs-Beck
A hardboiled egg, eaten on Easter
I’m standing at the sink with salt and pepper,
carefully removing the shell, sharp
edges yield to reveal the smooth
white, layer over layer, yolk,
yellow and grey, the core.
This is my Easter ritual,
left over from blessed baskets
filled with food, lining church aisles.
Polish grandmothers fussing
with basket linens, careful to expose each item,
required by tradition—
bread, kielbasa, colored eggs,
salt and pepper, sweets, a butter lamb.
Easter communion. Not the body and blood, transmuted;
real food, to be eaten first thing Easter Sunday.
A meal to break the fast, to break
the day. Break the egg, break with the past,
break the winter dark.
by Kim Jacobs-Beck
Summer selfie in
the South Dakota grass
cumulus and sun shadows
below the blue blue blue
This is now.
Back then,
I would have walked to Iowa
on callused feet if I
were prairie wild
But no. Wrote out my love
daily, sublimated
schoolgirl lust,
Find, then lose you, every night.
Now. Beyond the gate,
golden foxtail and garlic chives.
_____________________________________________________
Kim Jacobs-Beck was born just outside Detroit and has lived
in the Midwest for most of her life. A first-year student in Miami
University’s low-residency MFA program, she also serves as
Interim Associate Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of
English at the University of Cincinnati Clermont College. She
holds a Ph.D. from Miami University in British Romantic
Literature. Her work recently appeared in Love & Ensuing
Madness, a collection of poems from Rat’s Ass Review, and
Thank You for Swallowing and is forthcoming in NILVX and
Muddy River Poetry Review.
◄ Previous page Apple Valley Review, Spring 2017 Next page ►
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Apple Valley Review:
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 12, Number 1
(Spring 2017)
Copyright © 2017
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
A Journal of Contemporary
Literature
ISSN 1931-3888
Volume 12, Number 1
(Spring 2017)
Copyright © 2017
by Leah Browning, Editor.
All future rights to material
published in the Apple
Valley Review are retained
by the individual authors
and artists.
www.applevalleyreview.com
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EASTER EGG
UPPER MIDWEST
LOVE POEM
LOVE POEM