Jen Stein
Summer 2024 | Poetry
I know I’m too much sometimes, I know.
You’ve got to cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice
- U2, Running to Stand Still
I close my mouth / geode, agate, mica / kept warm, stone
teeth, sparkling glottis / cracked quartz / stars in my throat
280 million years / bind and grow, don’t / breathe, don’t say
too much, you’re / always saying too much / jenny
she never shuts up / jar of rocks / the mantle it shakes
every time you babble / do you ever stop / stop talking
eat an agate / curl your tongue / agates older than Lake Superior
what has touched them / you scare the fish / your words don’t
break anything / she wouldn’t stop asking / sorry baby, sorry
I brought you a geode / let’s crack it / knuckles worn
newsprint forgotten under the snow / how many dad?
how many agates / here’s one with a tiger eye / hold it there
how many / but he’s right I talk too much / silence a foreign soldier
ash protest / luminant gorge / how many before I choke to death?
Jen Stein is a writer, artist, editor, and educator in Fairfax, Virginia. Her art and writing are informed by her experiences with advocacy and activism surrounding the politics of the body, disability, and mental health. She has published and upcoming work with Anti-Heroin Chic, Atticus Review, Porkbelly Press, Whale Road Review, Menacing Hedge, and West Trestle Review, and has been assistant editor at Rogue Agent for eight years. You can find her on Instagram @jensteinpoetry, on bluesky @dexlira.bsky.social, and on Twitter @dexlira.