PORSCHE JONES

Stonecutter

Sedimentary rock forms when silt settles out of slowing currents

That's how small towns in upstate New York are made.

I asked for a rock tumbler for my birthday.

It made noise like a factory.

My father made noise like a factory worker

And moved it to the basement.

Polished gemstones require a certain hardness--

I stole quartz from the plaza outside the bank in handfuls.

"You have to go to New Hampshire to get agates, and igneous rock."

Not every fountain bubbling out of the earth is

Drinking water.

Not every rainbow leads to a pot of gold.

How many ripe apple trees and heavy dairy cows

Would I walk past on the way to New Hampshire?

Poetry, too, requires raw material.

I wish I could use talcum powder to make my poems soft and smooth.

Make them glitter like wet pebbles.

Get them into a museum gift shop

Where, by virtue of context, they might mean more

Than rocks off the ground.

New Hampshire is a rich and fertile place for poetry

but my words are still made of the dirt I was born in.

You've heard of diamonds in the rough

Now meet: rough in the diamonds.

It is good and it is solid and it has layers.

The slate and bluestone of headstones and tombs

Will grow moss, and crack with a noise like thunder. 

Porsche Jones is a writer and artist living in Manchester NH.  In 2025 she was published in Death Wish Poetry Magazine, Wayfarer, 100subtexts and Last Stanza Poetry Journal.  Recently she has won the 2025 Slam Free or Die Wheel Poetry Slam Championship.  Her work deals with queer love and nightlife, womanhood, being an artist, class issues, disability, and her relationship to the earth.