On the Back Step
how lucky am I
to have a place
where the trees have grown tall
since long before I was born
but they’re still mine, and I’m theirs
how lucky
to have a place with beds of moss
suitable for sleeping
curated species
chirruping birds
nowhere to be
the clucking hens, ticking their internal clocks
the only timepiece i needed
Waking Up Feeling Like You Slipped In and Out of My Life So Fast
my to-do list is very long
and I think of you between every task
more. probably three hundred times a day.
I want to cross you off too and be finished with you.
I just keep saving it for the end.
recurring places of comfort
photographs & poems by jillian benham
“this is my first body of work that is deeply about me and not others”
Recurring Places of Comfort debuted to the public at Avalon North, a women’s social arts and workshop club in Dover, NH on February 7th, 2020. It is a collection of personal black and white film photographs and corresponding poems, written over the course of five months. The show was up temporarily and only viewable by the public for two nights. Check out the photos and a few of the poetic selections below, and stay tuned for information on a book of the collection coming soon.
Citrus Twist
so distracted am I by the desire for descent into a love so true and different
oh if this were not my time to remain deeply alone
if you had not bewitched me into this unfelt emotion like a sixth sense
I could remain indifferent and steadfast, the greatest unfeeling fragment of myself.
Kaleidoscope
there is a special level of romance in uncertainty
when I try now to imagine who I could become
i’m never sure, the choices expand forever
i used to imagine infinite possibilities that all entailed being free
now I envision hereafters that all end in being alone
Neurological Etch-a-Sketch
my brain moves in full fantasy
stories are edited and seriously altered
tailored tightly to an ever expanding expectation
of what is and what was
until I forget how one made me feel
like crawling into myself
and how another made me see that
I am still so human it hurts
your brain will warp anything
with no regard to what you want to hear
but I won’t let it feed me lies
as it erases and erodes ten thousand tiny moments
that feature you