Jess Archer

ready

Three times a day

the train rumbles

through my neighborhood,

but it’s the middle of the night run

that I want to hear.

No one can tell me

there isn’t a message in it.

People like me

are born, live and die believing

in symbolism.

We lay flat on our backs

like solar panels

ready to receive.

We also trace the jagged tops

of mountains

with our fingertips.

Should the sleeping profile

of God be there.

the Gardener

God, what are you?

I am the gardener.

Why do you want me

to know this about you?

Because you’ve been afraid of me

for so long.

God, what do you love

about a garden?

I love the seed

that splits

in the dark.

All of you forget

that under your skin

there isn’t any light.

The seed

that splits in the dark

gives life.

How should I come to you?

Do you see the child

that reaches for the flowers

that lean into

the garden path?

See how she takes them

to her face.

Be that child with me.

Jess Archer is a poet and storyteller currently finishing her MFA in Creative Writing at Texas State University. In 2016, she published Finding Home with the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Billy Graham, a heartfelt memoir chronicling her nomadic childhood and spiritual search for belonging. Her voice has resonated in literary journals such as Porter House Review and forthcoming in Bloom, and in national magazines such as Christianity Today. Beyond the page, Jess teaches English to refugee children from around the globe—a calling that echoes her own experience of growing up without a fixed sense of home. That shared feeling of rootlessness fuels her empathy and shapes her writing, where themes of displacement, identity, and the meaning of "home" frequently surface. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, Americana singer-songwriter, B. Sterling. You can find Jess on Instagram.