7: Spearlike (from LIKE HONEY)
rosemary bough in breezea lady in sunglasses /it’s easy to get married /
that night in the alkali-dustytentthe forest’s moon lit
hatchworkharsh white /my teeth chattering hands trembling
stars in ourchromosomesroaring
at & in us / secret /outfrom the broken jar
of our original body /quickwhile we’re both here
tell me anexperience of exquisitepleasure / here’s one of
mine: sacked outG. & E. & meafter a week backcountry
frightened& happy mammalson a nowhere hill twenty-five miles to Umatilla
before a fire blownsideways as the sun settingburned
the snowline brieflyblueacross the Cascades / eating
bag-bottom cashew crumblessalmon skinpesto oil & Clif bars
as the stars swungtoward us their century-long lashes /my knee killing me /
the earth is my footstoolwhat kind of house can you build for me /like the tap-tap-
crunchon the eggshellinner membrane clinging /
thank you to
the please
remove
your cash past
past
ivy
argyling the
dumpster’s
volta
small
wings
big
feet
could I
be
completed and
not know the
line
the newspaper
vendor’s
sales-
cadence
soothes
to sense
toward what
hob-
bled
aviary
in
view
of
glad-
ness’s
strand-
work
ringing
love not
me
but
what body everunderstood inevitability /are any of these names
sacred or pertinentor even clear /under a spatter of grass clippings
one flowerpowder-purple /the duration of your skin
from throat to shoulder / noI imagineI’ll never be free of the power
pleasure & pain have over me /as spring day’s skirtdrags
& my dendrites crackle fromdeep in the over-taking stillness of the dead /
your folks saidin Kisanganithey met this American ex-Peace Corps
who told howyears ago she’d gone hikingbackcountry
brought a friendbrought her rifle in case /scaling a rock wall
slick with mossher friend had slippedfallen
twenty feet &smashed his knee /she left him her gun & food &
ranfrantic for the villagereturned 8 hours later with
two locals & a stretcherto find his hollowed-out corpse /
immobile &swarmed by aroving 10,000-strong colony
of flesh-eatingarmy antshe’d killed himself
single shotto the head /suicide is
absolutely literal:it’s what you dowhen the pain can no
longer be borne /so I’m tryingto cope with-
out righteousness /dyingwith this body is
the deathof all I know & allit’s possible I’ll make a change
of light & park crowdsclear out / athousand times
worse than thecrimes committed by thewicked are
the punishmentsinflicted by the good /& in our nation’s Chanel-scented
high-rise mausoleums& desiccated palm gardens& copper-stripped
sock factories
flecked with maroonmoney our brothers & sistersskitter
with fright& at a touch of speed-dialor a thinning in the mutter
of their motion-trackinglasers summonuniforms–people I mean–so
numbeddyspeptic & deeply bewitchedby their worldly might
that to beat & belittleshoot & surveilis their pleasure /
to protect us /it’s OKlook at his ropy limbs
& his snowy-ballfield eyes /I’d have been scared too /real talk:
every so oftena police officer isshot to death on the job
or a Blackwater employeeis burned in his Land Cruisermutilated
by a hundred eager instrumentsthenswung from a bridge & some
little voice in mebegins the tallyof answering
unrecordednightstick beatings& interrogation room rapes
Predator drones& street-to-street strafingwe’ll return with
to restorethe intricate patternworkof our righteousness
& might /to curseis not immoral /
but
where can
we go
to strike
the same
notes face
after face
new
meek
fop of a
friend after
new
blast of
lawless
maple
mountain’s
slumbering
water-
mark
fades
needletip
vines
crude after-
noon
assemblies of
lupine
touch my
throat
gingerly and the
instrument
trembles
sussurant
masses
of
leaves
in the halo of every citydon’t the sunned onesscavenge
a sort ofthundershake fruit
like fire fromcertain treesyet even these whose every
moment’sa throbbing thresholdI wouldn’t want
making law /& a sign I’m toldin a surge of baby octopuses
swallowed bythousands /drinking wine
& playing cards whensuddenly /a star dies
spewing elementsheavier with eachstellar generation–
helium from hydrogencarbon oreven iron–
& the stuff of usisscattered into being /
regathered into heat /the sun is athird-generation star /
windstruckpuddle stirringstreetlight
—
Jay Aquinas Thompson (he/they) is a poet, essayist, and teacher with recent or forthcoming work in Guesthouse, Interim, Pacifica Literary Review, and Passages North. They’ve been awarded grants and fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, the Community of Writers, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and King County 4Culture. They live with their child in Washington state, where they teach creative writing to incarcerated women.