‘Come on in my kitchen’ by M. Wright

— Hannah Cohen

Wright’s poem in the newest issue of Jet Fuel Review is the kind of poem that makes me want to step into the lines and look for the “cement-capped / rows of grass” myself. Truly, the unique descriptions elevate the poem from its unassuming title. I wish I had come up with the phrase “so January empty”, and really, this poem builds up to that atmosphere of absence, survival, and even violence performed by others (“juiced twelve bones without / getting any blood”).

I am intrigued by the relationship between various forms of nature and a collective group of people—see “[t]he night was closing around the family” and even “howls and boots”—there is very little separating humanity from that animal, no matter if we are placed in a domestic sphere.


Jet Fuel Review