Janine Goss

Janine (jj) Goss resides in central Massachusetts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as Happy, Branches Quarterly, Amarillo Bay, Lummox, 52%, Copious Lightening Bell, Writer's Monthly, Poetry Superhighway, Unlikely Stories, Red Booth Review, Sometimes City, Seeker, Blindman's Rainbow, and Slow Train. Her short story, "Missing a Beat," was nominated for a 2001 Pushcart Prize.

Unspeakable

her voice left her at the altar

running off to where voices go

where they hum and they whisper

promises no one could hear they refuse

to adhere to her surface

she’ll make it stick somehow oh yes

she’ll keep it on the cuff of her sleeve

but there’s a low rumbling coming

from someplace deeper where echoes go

chanting heard in the distance

and he calls her by the old name he thinks she is

the person she was

it was

just minutes or hours or days

before this mind you and he was

on time this time and she was unaware

that thoughts could be omens

thought they were bubbles

in a heart shaped tub just

cookie cutter love

now it’s past curfew now it’s midnight already

time to go home now wait

all she wanted was something

to talk about on Monday

no dream house after all

just a tent and a windstorm ever after promises

the echoes of things said before