It was my great joy to partner with We Choose Welcome to share this poem, “Invisible” Women.
From the notes: “’Invisible” Women’ gives language to the quiet strength of women the world tries not to see. Women whose hands prepare meals, whose voices hum songs of survival, whose courage endures even when sorrow is ignored.
These women are not invisible. They are wisdom-keepers, truth-tellers, and bearers of dignity in places where injustice seeks to diminish them.”
As the final poem I’ll be reading to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Bright Inhabited Lives, what better poem to end on than the final poem of the book?
This poem was written in response to the artwork featured, Time-Molt, Tender, by Annaliese Jakimides (USA) 2022, and first published by the Ekphrastic Review.
You can learn more about the artist and see more of her work here!
In continuing with this small celebration of Bright Inhabited Lives‘ one-year anniversary, I’m reading an excerpt from another prominent series of poems in the book, based on the artwork of Vilhelm Hammershøi.
This poem is a connected series of seven haibun poems, all exploring themes of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s interior works. Take a listen here:
You can view some of Hammershøi’s quiet, sometimes haunting interiors and learn more about his work as an artist here.
Learn more about the book here.
This poem was originally published in its entirety by The Ekphrastic Review.
Bright Inhabited Lives turned one year old this week!
To celebrate the launch of this collection, I’m reading a few of the poems in its pages for you, accompanied by the artwork that inspired them. Take a listen to one of the poems that sparked the collection below.
The full title of the painting is Blind Woman Reading Braille Volume. You can read more about the artist of this work, Ejnar Nielsen, here. This poem was originally published by The Ekphrastic Review.
Image credit: Samuel P. Hayes Research Library, Perkins School for the Blind, Watertown, MA.
“Incidental to the evidence
That meaning proves
Like a dough,
That thoughts do reach out
From the page
And claim us, knead
Us into form, rise
– An experience of the word
So bodily, eyes
In the meeting
Of print and finger,
Each word
A journey your hand
Must travel, send postage…”
Hello dear friends. I am thrilled to announce that after months of waiting, my next book titled “Bright, Inhabited Lives” is now out in the world! Find it on Amazon, or on the publisher’s website here.
As I encountered these poems again on the physical page, I couldn’t help but think again of these lines above, which you’ll find tucked within the pages of this book. I hope these words take you on your own journey into deeper layers of meaning, possibility, and our rich human capacity for life.
If you do pick up a copy this week (which I hope you do), it would make my year to see some reviews or comments come in, and hear how these words continue to live on in the world!
Together in the mystery,
Jenna
How I wander through these
days, stranger to my own making;
treading on thin spaces, and
the cracks expand across
the distance to where You live.
A wind blows and it whispers
Only words of you. A crow
settles in the trees Outside
the window and calls
Your name.
You call us, and we hunger.
You fill us, yet we cannot
get enough of You.
You, there beside us
in our kneeling prayer,
claiming us and yet ascending
in Your loving higher
until we are compelled
to bow
and love You so our hearts
may burst
while knowing we are Yours
and shall be in Your life
and life is Real and sharp
among our ribs.
I watched the crow for days
before I caught the secret
of your love affair
before I saw he only glanced
towards where You stood
rejoicing in his ebony creation.
And I knew my heart
would burn again
towards You
I knew that I would
wander, and return
again,
would
offer up this world
again
and over again
and always it would be
to You.
You will be the song I hum
in the dark, forgetting
Who it is I sing of
You will be the One
watching, giving
planting, birthing
always
a lopsided love affair
delighting in the
slow ripening
of my resurrection
calling my name
in the wind
and the wilding sky.
I began this poem on my 30th birthday this year, and finished it while in Assisi several months later. Since then I’ve returned to it often as a touchstone, a reorientation point, and I felt it would be appropriate to share now as we pass ”the still point of the turning world” (T.S. Eliot) and head into a new year.
May it be a year of journeys, and a year of returnings. May it be a year your soul ripens and expands into new and beautiful wings.
Happy New Year, friends.
She is stirring a pot of lentils over the makeshift fire, sun setting through the barbed wire fence behind her. He mends a broken tent, evidence of the last police raid.
How many months? she is asked over and over by those who seek her shelter.
Almost nine.
In this no mans land, the child is her talisman: proof that past and future are connected by some thin, elastic thread she need not understand. She accepts their place in the trailing wilderness of happenings. The stars leap out of the dark.
Before she sleeps, she will turn her face eastward, making the sign of the cross with her whole body, child rising and falling with her in these simple movements. Her eyes, a vessel of knowledge and fortitude. Her face to the exact spot where, by morning, the Day will break in the coming of a new light.

Introducing the Maria, the first in a new collection I’m launching launch to benefit refugees and asylum seekers around the world.
Made ethically in North America, the Maria is available in a variety of sizes and prices in silk, modal, satin, and polychiffon. Choose from two colors: coral/teal or rust/scarlet.
100% of the proceeds go to the Maria Skobtsova House in Calais this wintertime.
This design has been a labor of love for a place and a people I care for deeply. Whether or not you buy the Maria, I hope you’ll consider any gift that supports those searching for safety this holiday season.
PS: If you’re like me and you need some ideas of how to creatively style a square scarf, may I suggest this blog post, or this one?
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.
Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.
—
Ranier Maria Rilke, Book of Hours, I 59
Translated by Joanna Macy
Calais, France
My mouth is narrow.
I cannot open it wide enough
to feast on all that a day offers.
Example: today
the sky is a sinkhole
writing in watercolor
which the crows are circling
(those slicked, stern critics)
there are eleven new roses
swathed around sticks
like tufts of pink cotton
almost too sweet
and a man stops
to tug a bit
on his daughters jacket
and answer why
for the seventh time
he nearly misses
the shuffling bus
on which everyone notices
each other
and pretends not to
on which two women
will tell him, what a sweet
child, and he will glance
at another man’s newspaper
surreptitiously.
Onion skins waft
their way into everything
a promise of tomorrow’s
bounty, and the handprints
climbing up the walls
like a prayer.
And one mother holds
a sick child close
to her breast, incarnate
Madonna of the one
resting in the corner.
Anything
could be
ahead –
tiny fingers
iridescent with suds
wild mornings
that suddenly grow still
the steel blade of hope
knifing its way through
a kind of despair
it is too much
to chew;
I am gulping
the world down whole
I am managing
only the crumbs
the leftover miracles
piled into baskets
(nothing is wasted
after all, keep the
big meals for the ones
with larger stomachs)
I am watching the world
break open and multiply
before my very eyes.
Downwind of Grace 