Three Poems
Jess L. Bryant I. Dénouement I’ve been underneath the floor, pounding boards to find the one that creaks at night and sends my fingernails to search for mules, to mask the scratches on the wall, and below me felt the mold, bore my heels and then I heard her voice in shrivels and I went down to fodder further, locked my knees to shrines and braced for distance. I recall a time she welcomed thoughts of digging rapture into graves and found comfort now she fucks me with her eyes closed. And I escape into the dirge, humming through the pages searching scripts for better times: the night we beat the walls in took the windows in our palms reported bleeding, made love on the sidewalk while ants got tangled in my leg hair and her mustache starts peeling on my tongue. II. A Variation on Threnody I tore down statues and left no fingerprints, dropped Maya Devi for Squizzy Taylor, came into your hands and screamed Jesus Christ like a sailor. I’ll trade decadence for a chance to parlay absence into remains. And this is the part that I like. Tongues raising questions of apathy to the nun down the street who begged me to join the gang. Turn me over, she said, and I sacrificed her body for humor, I inquired about the notion of propriety. What happens when we delay the process of adaptation? Tempt me with absence. I’ll show you resurrection, barter for telepathy, sans sarif, you won’t find any lineage. I’ve swallowed the marks and backed you into a corner. III. Parenthese(s) beside you I theoretically fell surfaced climbed etcetera toward in evolution posthumous rather than i.e. listing livable circumstance see notes from the baroque period from the industrial revolution from the reference section in 1.1 I outline my tone in symbols in equations and drop names of philosophers I don’t understand |
About the author:
Jess Bryant currently resides in New Mexico, but is relatively nomadic. She is an English Instructor at night and edits compliance reports during the day. Editing compliance reports is boring; however, the company does not mind if her tattoos and piercings are visible. Her work is forthcoming in Star 82 Review. |