Jade Benoit

I burned the wedding flowers & they became sea urchins. A tomboy gone electric with dishes pecked in tiny loose spines thrown out to the wolves. Something feels Daddy T says sometimes I think you’ve erased yourself by not trying. The closet inside the skeleton. The skeleton taking notes in the barn with a box cutter. As though the whole economy of what I want is only a momentary filler escaping with the smoke. Oh Daddy-Dear how your remedy is immune to me & Oh how my little coin purse is a mine of snapped fingerbones. There goes my space on the mantle & a textbook version of the whole nine yards. A terry cloth boyfriend & a girl with burnt petals burnt hands. There goes the ball gown there goes teatime there goes the love inside me trying to breathe. There goes the hoot-n-holler on the dance floor & in the church pew & while Daddy T shouts that’s her that’s my daughter! for all the other Mommys & Daddys to hear.

Jade Benoit received an MFA in Poetry from the University of North Carolina – Wilmington. Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, LUNGFULL! Magazine, Nashville Review, Smoking Glue Gun, Similar Peaks, and Sun’s Skeleton, among others.

You’ll find biographies for all contributors to Phoebe 43.2 here.