Charles Jensen

I just discovered a poet named Charles Jensen and I am completely enamored of his writing. Insightful and rather dark, this guy is going places. I first read his work in The Collagist and then went in search of more. The poems in The Collagist are from an Jensen's book Nanopedia: The Smallest American Reference and I definitely encourage you to seek out the book or at least the excerpts included in The Collagist. The poem I have posted here, "Flowers," is from his book Living Things and first appeared in No Tell Motel. I hope you enjoy his work as much as I do!

Flowers
By Charles Jensen

Every room fills with buds
sprung open like snake heads.

The big, dumb eyes of the chrysanthemums
look jaundiced and sick.

The lilies
have nothing more to give and drop their petals
like small gloves.

Their sweet smell grows more fetid.
My head stays dizzy and numb.

Each day the house
takes on more death, more dying; more doomed flowers
go to pieces.

I want to know whose idea this was,
filling up death
with hundreds of smaller deaths.