by Scott Alexander Jones
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Thunderstruck / / as all things tracing their heritage back to water. / As if there were no finality / / beyond the privacy of their fevers. / / Which is the privacy of our epidermal apologies / scrawled in henna— / / Your olive skin / / lachrymose with perspiration. / A cuneiform neither of us comprehend / / come morning. / / Cryptic as this nameless German composer/s journal— / Waterlogged refrains / / soundless since Rimbaud / / sailed to Abyssinia to sell firearms. / This sketch of a lyre / / somehow finding its way from a flooded cellar to myself / / an illiterate musician. / / Remnants, coarse handprints / deep within a cavern long since collapsed. / / Pictographs on truckstop bathroom stalls declaring: / / I too was here. / / Pocketknife graffiti on the backmost Pentecostal pew / whispering: / / I want to leave / / soundlessly in my sleep. / Not howling, like my little sister / / on our way to the funeral.
Scott Alexander Jones is the author of a collection of poems: “One Day There Will Be Nothing to Show That We Were Ever Here” (Bedouin Books, 2009). He completed his MFA at The University of Montana and was Writer-in-Residence at The Montana Artists Refuge during October of 2009. He is co-founder of Zero Ducats, a literary journal assembled entirely from stolen materials, and releases music as Surgery in the Attic. He currently resides in Wellington, New Zealand.
Love the lyricism.