Jayne-Marie Linguist

Jayne-Marie Linguist is currently a graduate student at TAMUCC. Linguist is working on a MA in the arts and was showcased in volume 19 of the Windward Review, Empathy and Entropy.

Being a Texan native from the woodland area of North Houston, she fell in love with Corpus Christi after moving back to Texas from Idaho. Her poetry aims to explore our interactions and interpretations of the world through not a huge and grandiose view, but through a personal one that touches the most hopeless parts of ourselves and holds out a hand to pull us into the light.

Currently living with the love of her life, Poe M. the cat, she aims to explore her personal experience as a fat queer person for her MA thesis through her newest project, a poetry and creative nonfiction hybrid. The project will utilize her studies and knowledge delving into queer theory, disability studies, and fat studies to explore the interconnections that can be made between them.

When asked about what she would want the world to know about her, one of her statements was the fact that she has never written a ‘perfect’ or ‘correct’ sonnet and admitted that it is still one of the forms of poetry that she struggles with. While this may seem to be self-demeaning to some, I believe it shows her humility. Even through experience and publication, we as writers can still struggle with the writing process, that achieving perfection within our own skill set is something that is constantly shifting-- something that is a constant work in progress.  

Float

Waves besiege my body.

I can’t

Breathe. 

I swim in a sea of pills

That don’t work.

That I won’t take.

Polar opposites

Of my mind

Rock me into a treacherous sleep.

I struggle in the water for days- months,

Not knowing where I am

Or who I’ve become.

I reach the easy white shores

Of a place I’ve never been before.

I am at peace.

Velvet sand squishes in

Between my toes

And I smell the salty air.

The sun emerges from

Hollowed depths of the dark

And gloomy blues behind the clouds.

Warmth

Engulfs my body 

And gives me a motherly hug.

Polar opposites

Of my mind

Quell. 

I swim in a sea of pills

That work.

That I’ll take.

And this time, I’ll float too.