New Poetry by Ivan Jenson

Sweeping generalities

(under the table)

Just because

everything

is falling together

doesn’t mean

it isn’t falling

and just because

everything

is coming together

doesn't mean

it can’t come apart

so I am going

to go through with

my obligatory

responsibilities

with white trash

panache

and allow myself

to be midwifed

into mid-life

and then

I will party

crash the pearly

gates

with my

never-said-I-was-a-saint

VIP pass

which I stole

from Paul

to give to

Peter

- Ivan Jenson 2011

Undercurrents

The small chill

that runs up one’s back

and blows through

the stark naked branches

of these trees in the boroughs

where the bread winner lives

and the toaster burns

the bread

his wife planned to

sweeten with jelly

as the kids rush

to the bus like

a school of little

kisses and under

their winter caps

a list of secret wishes

to grow up and out

of the house with

the broken dishes

and those angry exchanges

about Daddy

and the pretty sitter

or mom’s lost dream

of being an archaeologist

where she might have

uncovered the happiness

she has lost

like an Aztec treasure

- Ivan Jenson 2011

Ivan Jenson’s Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and Interview magazine. His art has sold at Christie’s, New York. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Camroc Press Review, Haggard and Halo, Poetry Super Highway, Mad Swirl, Alternative Reel Poets Corner, Underground Voices Magazine, Blazevox, and many other magazines, online and in print. Dead Artist, a novel by Ivan Jenson is available at Amazon.com in paperback and as an eBook for the Amazon Kindle, the Barnes & Noble Nook, and on Google's eBookStore.