Work by Brittany Jablonsky

The Tree

Leaves fall like teardrops and trickle down the knotted bark, collecting in a gray molten pool.
They are dead.
The leaves fall like broken glass, shards piercing and wounding the grass as they fall.
Like needles, an aching reminder that life brings pain and all must end.
The leaves inject their death into the air.
Silence is shattered, never to be restored.
Writhing branches claw at the air desperately, trying to hold on to some sliver of life. They are cruelly stabbed in reply.
All is wounded.
Once a beautiful, fully living force, now bald and humiliated.
All is changed.
Skeletal remains remind us of the life that was.
All must end.

Author's note: This poem was written as an exercise. The point was to write about an object from the viewpoint of someone who has just learned they have a terminal illness, such as cancer.

Ode to my Snowshoes

silly straitjacket laces control the insaneness of your toes
your fiery feet fly like frying pans, indeed
over the disaccharide cotton candy snow
the strings of a guitar are being plucked one by one

I want to play badminton behind a barn!
we swing wildly at a whirling birdie and miss
but we cartwheel our way home
under a colorful kool-aid sky

canoes surround my mellifluous feet
keeping them from pouring out onto the sand
they zigzag through a slalom course,
casually avoiding Bangkok, Detroit, and Constantinople

two halibut speak to each other, bubbles leaping from their mouths
colloquialisms scamper out the door…
and gather in my fishing net
to be plucked out by my pink, sticky fingers

Author's note: This poem was written as a surrealist perspective on an object. Surrealism is basically just a different way of looking at things, not always seeing them as they are meant to be seen, and not always seeing them rationally. Surrealist works are meant to express your subconscious and contain a lot of imagination.