two poems

by Ingrid Marie Jensen

I Am Always Looking for Books About Montana

or some other place I haven’t been

but that I can imagine

with a kind of psychosexual

hunger, a ravaged desire

for open spaces, clean lines

fields of wheat, the sustenance of

silence, instead of the crowded city,

the smell of smoke and chemical fruits

the lack of silence, of straight lines.

Dreaming of Horses

when I reach up in a performative attempt

to get my hands on something that won’t move

I know deep down what I really want are horses,

bright horses, bolting in from the blue

and I know that’s borderline

affirmations written on the mirror in lipstick

but I’m looking for complications

and not for answers anyway--

complications and blue horses in the night.

all this is just to say, if you’re in the dark

and there seems to be no way out

ring me up, call on me. I’m just a click away.

Photo of Ingrid Marie Jensen (taken by Lou Smith)

BIO: Ingrid Marie Jensen is a two-time recipient of the Dara Wier Award for Poetry. She works as a music journalist, chiefly covering the "South London scene," and is a student in modern and contemporary writing at the University of East Anglia. She is 24 years old.