Rachel Jackson's Blog

After the last snowflake melts, after the first raindrops fall from the awakening skies, after the thawing soil is tilled for planting, when the vernal sun breaks over the eastern horizon, a certain field of sunflowers begins its annual bloom, and Dolores begins watching from the farmhouse next door to see which sunflower will reach maturity first each year—it is that flower upon whose stem she will tie her daughter’s white hair ribbon, the one she wore on her quinceañera. 

It is no longer Do...

It’s electric
This attraction of ours
There’s no further proof than in the darkness last night
When you drove me up the mountain
And we stood together beneath a black sky
And searched for constellations—
I sought Cassiopeia and her beauty first
The stars glittered above in all their cosmic splendor
And the houselights flickered in the slumbering city down below
And when you stepped toward me there was a spark
Static electricity from the friction of our winter coats
A jolt of energy that traveled up your bo...

I.

In paintings she is the quintessential Madonna:

demure, deferential, her face painted with round features and soft colors,

a delicate oil on canvas,

a woman canonized with an angelic golden halo,

a shining icon of faith and purity.

In some depictions she wears an expression of pained piety on her face,

her eyes lifted pleadingly to the sky

as if searching for a freedom only providence can bring.

In other depictions her eyes look toward the ground in mourning.

She often holds one hand to her r...

What I remember most about my dad was all the boxes.

Every few weeks, my dad loaded up his car with recyclables: boxes heaped with yellowed newspapers, boxes stacked within other boxes, boxes of glass bottles clinking against each other as if toasting to their imminent end. 

The recycling drop-off center was an industrial garage a few miles out of town. My dad drove inside the building, parked his car next to a dumpster, and told my brother and me to start tossing recyclables wildly into thei...

for JMH

Two roommates, each with dearth of dignity,
Present themselves thus in our pithy scene,
‘Twixt whom new mirth grows from old pleasantry,
And ribald pun makes civil talk unclean.
From forth their biting tongues which farce befits,
A rush of off-color jokes takes the stage,
Rife with bawdy riposte and brazen wit—
Ignoble fools lifted from Shakespeare’s page.
The ceaseless chatter of their droll intent—
Enshrined elsewhere in better comedy—
Which, but their speakers’ hush, nought could p...

When her fire burns, she dances.
From a darkness below into another above she rises, and begins swaying to an internal rhythm discernible only to herself and the ineffable cosmos. She is one with the light of her sun—the fire spreads from her
heart to her fingertips as she reaches far out into infinite space.
She dances.
She arches her back, her head held high facing the darkness, and leans to one side, then to the other. She spins to the left, the hem of her dress sparking below her as she g...

Facing an unyielding modernity,
Overcoming history that has been,
It’s time for us women to recognize
The power of female fraternity—
In a culture that ranks us below men—
And decide that we must now fraternize.

Let’s stand against female subjugation;
Let’s rise up and take to the streets; we’ll show
The world our dreams to revolutionize—
For there is strength in collaboration
And fire in the hearts of women, so
We must come together and fraternize.

We’ll wear on our sleeves femininity,
Apply...

I.

The day the sun collapsed, Nick One Feather woke up to a black dawn. Mites of dust floated above his bed, barely visible. His skin cracked from the dry air, his mouth parched from open-mouth breathing in the usual high temperatures all night, Nick glanced up from his bed out the window to see only a slate-colored sky resting dully above the earth.

It was dark. Too dark. Although he felt surprisingly rested, Nick felt sure he had woken up hours too early. He sat up, squinting, and reached f...

Little coffee shop, upstairs nook
With good pastries, good company, good books,
Rich conversation, literary dictation.
One friend’s dissertation
Just published—her own treatise—
Her girlfriend’s a genius:
Smartest couple I’ve ever known
And literature is our creed,
So we sit here and read.

The other guy is alone:
This man’s just approached us out of nowhere
Oblivious to our recalcitrant glares
And he swoops in now, leading
With an unfunny comment on the book I’m reading.

Reluctant introductio...

it’s bizarre to me that i am alive when all this nazi shit is happening.

not the fact that it’s happening now,

but that it’s happening when i’m alive.

see the difference?

i never expected to see literal nazis,

not when we have the entire 1930s and 1940s as a precedent.

racism has always been around—

i’m not so naive to think otherwise;

i may be white but i’m not blind

—or colorblind—

but it still blows my mind

that this is happening in my lifetime.

again, not that it’s happening now—

‘it’s 20...