Kathryn Jacobs
WHEN EXPLANATIONS DON'T HELP
(in memory of Raymond)
It's hard to live with someone you can't see.
Like living with a ghost: you learn the rules,
but it's another thing entirely
to follow them. For instance, swallow tails:
elongated and slim, like scissors in
a surgeon's hand. Until you see one fly:
two tails, one body. Naturally you spin
about to point . . . and jerk, and stop, and try
to look as though you didn't. People stare,
or glance behind you quickly, and away,
because you clearly saw somebody there,
and crazies make them nervous. You could say
you used to know someone who used to care,
and birds make you forget, but . . . that's okay.
Kathryn Jacobs is a poet and medievalist at Texas A&M University. Her chapbook of poetry, Advice Column, appears from Finishing Line Press in November, and she has an e-chapbook sponsored by Poetry Midwest (The Boy Who Loved Pigeons). Her poems have appeared widely in such journals as New Formalist, Measure, Washington Literary Review, Acumen (UK), Pulse, Slant, Candelabrum (UK), DeCanto, Quantum Leap (UK), Mezzo Cammin, Deronda Review, The Same, Contemporary Rhyme, Ship of Fools, Eclectic Muse, Barefoot Muse, Mobius, Chimaera, Toasted Cheese, 14 by 14, Wordgathering, and The Interpreter’s House (UK), and Road Not Taken. She has also published a scholarly book on literary marriage contracts in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (University Press of Florida) and sixteen articles in periodicals. She has two daughters. She lost her 18-year old son, Ray, in 2005.
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