"The Woman at the Well," and Other Poems

by Jeremy Frey

Jeremy Frey has published poems in DreamSeeker Magazine and Tough Times, an anthology produced by Sacred Bearings. Jeremy is studying toward a Creative Writing MFA at the University of Arizona and taught at Lithuania Christian College in Klaipeda, Lithuania during July 2004 . Between coursework, teaching, and hiking with his dogs in the desert, he volunteers for the Poetry Center by leading poetry workshops in schools and runs the Work-in-Progress graduate reading series for University of Arizona creative writers. See DreamSeeker Magazine for additional poems.

The Woman at the Well

Do you see her digging like a crazed dog? The black soil flying from her talons her eyes flying in all directions? Do you see the cemetery the grave yard the yard of graves? The stone head stone hedge Stonehenge the dirt the plastic flowers wilting the eyes in all directions the nails talons tin snips scream scratch the packed black dirt swarming like bees incensed about the night black.

Her tongue of worms.

Do you see her digging on the grave like a crazed dog? Her hair curled and flashes out in all directions swirls the typhoon of her eyes tears through the decades of plastic flowers, the packed dirt swarms behind her knees her face snapping & gnashing the damned earth the dirt a fire in the air her claws shred & bleed the damned grave, what stirs beneath?

What rots against the coffin?

Why has she appeared now, incensed & demonic, indifferent to your standing behind her, indifferent to your stare? You have killed her many times, the pistol in the head, the knifed cock, the callousness, apathy, refusal to sleep to dream, the sweet void refused, the sweet void turned from, the grave deepens as you lose your footing as your feet slip on the ever-tilting walls, your hands claw, the walls crumble, the worms jump to your tongue, your teeth converted.

Love is Projection

All this time trees run free with wolves, elk giddy leap
off rims uncertain. Their bodies a train; one car at a time falls
into cupped palms of snow …

All this time I thought you outside me - apple of my eye in my eye,
yellow flower among clover - tart on the tongue, tart off the tongue …

All this time I looked for you outside myself.
The stream does not run down the mountain,
the mountain runs the stream.

All this time you do not wait. Heat drifts away from the heated,
mirages shine in the distance. Bodies dissipate, burrow in the present.

The heart is not the heart.
Heart the hare art eats earth-hat, eats ear-art, eats he & her, ha!
Are the tears tarried? Tarred? What lies in the pit waits to rise, the rim just a rim …

All this time you allow my forcing.
Coal becomes diamond. Sand, glass.
The fat man squeezed through the eye of a needle,
the camel laughing …

The Last Supper: Acting Out

So now
I'm finishing
dinner for twenty
on a backyard lawn in Tucson,
stripped naked, the part of me cringing
under social pressure removes each dry item

of clothing -
the terrified children
shriek with sick delight,
yes, yes - I'm nude. White skin bones
standing on top the square pool's wall
My friends, do not be alarmed, this'll be over

soon, it's
something
I need to do,
my good doctor,
that naked Jew of the Cross,
one of many, says it's good for my health.
I fall backward forever into his sweet blood-caked

embrace, the water cold,
and a part of me,
shrinking.