Jennifer Shikes Haines

Jennifer Shikes Haines (she/her) is a disabled poet and retired educator based in Southeast Michigan.  She enjoys exploring questions of what does, and doesn’t, connect our world. She is a member of the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program cohort for 2025. She has poems published or forthcoming in  The Patterson Literary Review, coalitionworks, Tension Literary, JAKE and HNDL Mag: Highlighted Neurodivergent & Disabled Life, among others. She can be found on IG @jenshaines77.

Easy read of the poems in the images above:

Letter from my small intestine to my brain

You did it again, friend.  Your wires so

crossed, the joints said “enough” and 

blast of mega steroids bloomed

a sunflower of Heliobactor Pylori

clinging to my walls, infecting me

with fury. 

Chill for once, you sodden piece

of meat.  I dream of green forest

where my genius of peristalsis can

truly rest. I want to be an emerald

green snake of brilliance, while you just

drag us in the mud and muck things up

again.  No antibiotic will cure this. But 

you’re a stubborn bitch, so I’m showered with

laxatives, invasive tests, an endoscopy.

Life with you— unpossible collaboration.

What I Can Do on a Good Day

Wash that large griddle

read the Nap Ministry

take a nap myself

eat a pazcki

eat a power bowl of microgreens

run up Mount Mansfield with my dog

her little legs pumping

my little legs pumping

swim the Channel and end

with a polar bear plunge

ride the Chunnel on my bike

hell, just ride my bike

lift every Ypsilanti organizer

on my shoulders and give them

the stash from all the bad banks

and the good ones

bow to Bernardine Evaristo

high-five Pauli Murray

lift weights with RBG

bring them snacks, tea, kombucha,

wine, the finest whiskey, water

from the Appenines

build the world’s biggest home

with enough rooms

to grow a garden of teens

nourish them with

veggie omelets and fruitcrisp

grow multiple ears

and listen, listen,

my many ears sponges

from the Great Barrier Reef.