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.