February 2022
Bio Note: I am a second-career poet, having spent my adult life till 2020 teaching German and Spanish at Northern Kentucky University. In a way, I am still walking through life looking for just the right words, enjoying the thrill of the hunt and the mystery of the power of language. I've never been nominated for a Pushcart but derive great joy knowing that my first chapbook is being used in the creative writing classes at the Hoboken Shelter. My poems are published in various on-line and print journals and my first poetry collection (Between the Rows, Shanti Arts) will appear in 2022.
Ancient Nightmare
Classes missed curse our dreams
big tests we’re sure to fail
legs like putty stuck in quicksand
memories from cartoonland’s canvas.
But what haunted our ancestors’ sleep
that steeped beside flames and family?
A deer so fleet it could only be heard
a fire that sulked, spawned mere cheerless ash
berries taunting lush from branches
not even tiptoes reached, hand opening
pots that promised ocher ground to pigment
for blending with cave water, blood. But
color pot’s empty—cave’s nightmare
walls stare back bare.
©2022 Nancy K. Jentsch
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