JOLENE NOLTE

Two poems

The Rift

The nothing that is everything
stretches indeterminately.

Raw ache rivers down my throat, cleaves
my ribcage, then scars and craters my core.

How do I yet hold together?
What am I held together for?

Swimming backstroke over the deep
end, my sides alternately tilt.

Unease subsides as I’m steadied
by my rift, this column of breath, proceeding.


Concert A

Smell of resin and my musty
clarinet case, my reed’s wood taste
on my tongue as I assemble
my inherited instrument:
mouthpiece, barrel, body joints, bell.
Behind me, brass section’s spittle
bubbles, spills in staccato pffts!
A cacophony of phrases,
scales, arpeggios swirl in C
major, F sharp, B flat minor—
until the white baton’s light taps
command our sudden stillness.

With a cue, the concertmaster
at the conductor’s side sounds A,
the one note to which our many
warm, dark, bright, airy, timbres tune.

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Jolene Nolte currently lives in the noisiest house on the quietest street in Vancouver, British Columbia. There, she revels in the innumerable shades of green and the fact that she does not have to choose between mountains and the ocean. She studies theology, shelves books, reads and writes poetry at Regent College.