The Wolf Inside
There is a wolf that lives inside me
named Suicide. She sleeps beneath
my sternum. When she howls I forget
that that sound, that cry, that wail
is not me. Once someone found my blog
with the phrase “the suicide of Jennifer Krohn.”
Did they hope to find suicide’s yellow
eyes, long teeth dressed in my nightgown?
Did some other poor Jennifer think
she could slice open Suicide’s stomach
and crawl into the wet warmth? A teenager,
I tried to cut her out. Everyone misread
my scars, thought lunacy had taken me.
That one night I’d see the full moon,
luminous, and buy a rope, tip back
my head and join Suicide’s song.
But I never stopped loving the smell
of day lilies, the spots on their petals;
I never stopped loving the pink blaze
of each sunset. I only wanted to cut
the wolf out, to stop hearing its voice.
The rest of Suicide’s pack circled.
Virginia, Sylvia, Anne, Francesca
all calling for their pack mate. Hundreds
of voices joined their song: a crowd
with no names. Each forgotten. Manuscripts
and canvasses left in closets, under beds.
Just too painful to look at.
Every cut I inflicted on that wolf became
a mouth. I fed her stone after stone,
but Suicide remained ravenous. I can’t
kill that wolf, but I can sing hush,
hush, hush, the lambs are in the meadow.
The flowers are opening their petals.
Today will be a good day;
tomorrow we’ll worry about the grave
until she closes both eyes and dreams.
The Unopened Grave
“Dying/ Is an art”
—Sylvia Plath
“the death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world”
—Edgar Allen Poe
I’m clumsy with flesh.
Each year it grows.
My skin threatens
wrinkles. Soon I’ll be
a set of old drapes,
a window people look through.
I’ve learned that life lacks
art. It’s a jelly sandwich
a child has shoved
behind the couch, a beloved
book ruined by a friend,
and all that time on the toilet.
No one wants to read that. No,
they want a corpse,
a girl who’ll only grow
skinnier with rot. A girl
who will disappear
into a handful of dust.
I read Sylvia and consider
what the phoenix lacks.
How she will always be
the photographs, a collection
of poems (organized by her ex),
an academic argument.
But now that I’ve decided
to put off death till old age,
ill health, or accident,
I want to open that grave.
Find a woman, past perfection,
who embraced the unpoetic and lived.
Jennifer Lynn Krohn (she/her) was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She earned her MFA from the University of New Mexico, and she currently teaches English at Central New Mexico Community College. She has published work in The Pinch, Storm Cellar, Pleiades, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal among others. Twitter: @jennkrohn Instagram: @jennlynnkrohn