Mara Jebsen
Podcast (claritycast): Play in new window | Download | Embed
which we can picture arising from the mind of the woman from The Yellow Wallpaper, perhaps
long before the story begins
long before the story begins
degrade defile de–
A deed is what is done by the doers; who are agents of what’s
intelligent, responsible and do-able
in the universe. Doers: hold deeds
on parchment paper, to keep on holding
to the deeds they’ve done. No one knows
what a death-candle is, but some have seen it
shimmer among mountains. to Deface is to mar
the features of a thing, even if that thing
is faceless, immaterial–
& in the dementia of the night, it is hard
to know
what’s done or undone; you have
defaced my inner thoughts, i cried out
but you said: indeed? that’s not possible.
Mara Jebsen is a performer, poet and Senior Language Lecturer for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her poems can be found in jubilat, earlier issues of Fogged Clarity, Boxcar Poetry Review, and Hanging Loose Press. A New York Foundation of the Arts fellow and essayist for the Arts & Literature column of 3quarksdaily, Mara has been working at the intersection of poetry and drama for 16 years, and hails from Philadelphia, and Togo, West Africa.