Issue > Poetry
Jari Chevalier

Jari Chevalier

Jari Chevalier’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Literary Review, Barrow Street, Beloit Poetry Journal, Boulevard, Cimarron Review, Gulf Coast Online, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares and others. In 2014, she received a Merit Award in the Atlanta Review's International Poetry Competition and was a finalist in Ploughshares' Emerging Writer's Contest. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from City College of New York.

White Ink on White Paper


It's so quiet at the monastery; I wait for the bells.
Veils move across veils, clouds at different altitudes.

So many times I felt like laughing and tried to be serious;
in the elevator we all look up at the numbers.

I've cheated myself, then come back begging. Whatever
the shape of the shadow, my conscience moves on the floor.

There is cruelty wringing its hands in our dinner plates, breaking
the bones, sucking at the marrow.

Sleep seduces; orchids collapse; bees suck the clover fiercely.
You can't strangle cruelty, its neck like a balloon's. Sunlight reaches

another star, bends there like hair down a staircase. It's so quiet I feel
the crush of every step and the trampled grass recovering behind me.

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