Cochlea [ Jenna V. Wray ]

I have been made acquainted with too many secrets.
                                   —Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

The worst diseases
take up residence
in the harmless garden snail,

the worst confessions
somehow always manage
to find my ear—

my aunt, insisting
she can hear the dead
in the radiator pipes,

her child, show-&-telling
how she unwings the green
June bugs.

The widow Shelley’s all too willing
to prove what she carries
in the silk,

& Emma Eckstein’s secret thoughts
turn to blood
inside her nose

& make their scarlet exit
so that we know
with certainty

what kind of thoughts
are those,
lurid as a fever & as hot.

Jenna V. Wray (née Sumpter) edits for Kelsay Books and The Orchards Poetry Journal. Her work appears in Caesura, New Welsh Review, and elsewhere. A member of the WAY Writing Group in central Arkansas, she’s received multiple 2025 awards from White County Creative Writers, a BFA from the University of Evansville and Harlaxton College, and a much-belated OCD diagnosis. Find her on Instagram/Substack/X @JVSReads.