Jean Monahan
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Jean Monahan is the author of three books of poetry: Hands, winner of the 1991 Anhinga Prize for Poetry ; Believe It or Not, Orchises Press, 1999; and Mauled Illusionist, published in early 2006 from Orchises Press. She holds an MFA from Columbia's Creative Writing Division. She currently lives in Salem, Massachusetts, with her daughter and is a web site producer and manager.
Monahan has won numerous awards and has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, DoubleTake, The American Scholar, Ploughshares, Orion, The New Republic, Salamander, Shenandoah, Nimrod, and Heliotrope, among other places. She has also been published in several anthologies, including The Poets’ Grimm and Orpheus & Company.
About Mauled Illusionist, Molly Peacock said: "...flashes of wisdom and candor pierce the fretwork design of Jean Monahan’s spare, beautiful poems."
About Believe It or Not, Vijay Seshadri said: "...these poems are by turns tender and violent, ruefully intelligent and well-informed, and absolutely authentic."
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Caesura
The rough lull between one wave and the next.
That smooth roar makes us forget:
Something larger always crests.
Down we go. Falter in the dark salt.
Stand. Smile. You’re all right.
Nature likes a flailing about,
Crack in the castle, crumbled
Moat. Wait out the wave. Dig.
A hole big enough to hold the world.
Someone you love is dead.
The Sea Horse: A Love Story
for Tom Consi
In all seahorse and pipefish species thus far found to be monogamous, male and female partners perform an early morning greeting, during which they change colour and dance together for about 6 min.; greetings reinforce the pair bond. Amanda Vincent, Animal Behaviour, 1995.
Tell me how it is to run with no legs,
to gallop long in the turquoise light
after some blinding, unobtainable point,
moon and stars your phantom riders.
There's a field where the wild run
until they break under the halter
of independence. I find you tethered
to blue-green ribbons of weed
in a glassy garden of dancing shrimp.
The neck of the stallion bows
to the yoke of loyalty or devotion.
The spine is for courage, cinching
to one blade only, though the tide
tips you until you touch your snout
to the sand, and then back,
until you rear in the tumble
and salt, charging the surf.
Somewhere, out of sight, the clef
body of your mate lives out a life
of soulful diligence. Once a day
she comes to where you cling
and you twine: two S's, two bamboo-
colored strokes. Love is the cage of bone
worn on the outside, the small, critical
organs glowing like enchanted stones
behind the scrim. Love is the spiny
bride, wherever you find him
Life After Water
In the life before water, we were rock.
Molten. Singed. The heat was in our mouths:
it took our words away.
Now we swim in the lake of vowels. I and you.
Water is about drift and change.
The trick is to embrace what absorbs
and dissolves you, let each stroke pull
the shadows into light.
When you step on a fish, you take on its power.
The edge of the lake is where we end.
In the life after water,
wind speaks with a louder voice,
the sky is white with dying stars.
Only those with water in their ears
can hear them fall.
