JoAnna Novak
Summer 2024 | Poetry
Two Poems
Lob
It feels good
to smash,
rocket earth,
bouncing
we burn
calories
I don’t
care. Thinking
: buy flowers
for my son.
The smoking
woman plucks
in-growns
from my calves
and tells me
she doesn’t
want kids
but
she loves people
who love kids.
Was my mother
into me,
did she say
a positive
thing? Lob
an easy happy
my way? One
minute she cried
on the phone,
scared, the next
at the zoo.
Before showering
I bounce, naked,
practicing my shot
until the volley
became automatic:
forehand left
foot, backhand
step right, twist,
stiffen wrist,
throw a medicine ball
of molten blood
into the maternaverse.
She knows me
little, least of all
my love for the hopper.
Comma, With a Line From Bruce Nauman
I need to learn a lifetime
how to pause and separate
the picture of you lithe in Ojai
from the picture of me bleeding
down my thighs. I need
to itemize my desire—
an abandoned estate,
close to the coast,
a demotion, my hands
on the backs of your knees,
hot. A quick lesson
on subordination: press
yourself against the blackboard.
This may become an erotic experience.
JoAnna Novak is the author of memoir Contradiction Days: A Writer on the Verge of Motherhood. Her short story collection Meaningful Work won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by FC2. She is the author of the novel I Must Have You and three books of poetry: New Life; Abeyance, North America; and Noirmania. Her fourth book of poetry, DOMESTIREXIA, will be published by Soft Skull Press in 2024.