By Jake Adam York
Perhaps, this morning, we’re there,
normal and soon forgotten, as news is
when it’s passed over breakfast, like love,
something that’s always cast, too
heavy to hold for long. We breathe it in,
the bacon, the coffee. We listen to the little
quavers as the local tongues, water over rock,
rise and fall, like stones skipping soft
into the white that smoothed them. The women
speak like grandmothers, softly
opening their mouths, opening
and drawing advice from themselves,
like biscuits, and offering in kindness
a little more than anyone could ask, more
than anyone can take. I know their pitying.
It looks like patience, the look on everyone’s
faces as the peddler shuffles in his blindness,
black hand held open, everyone awaiting
the hiss of door, the whisper in everyone’s
throats, breaking from patience into pleasure.
Poet Bio
More Poems about Relationships
Her Dreams
Mommy always wanted
To be famous
She would have us (my sister and me)
Sing
In all the talent shows
But I could not carry the harmony
Then she had me
Sing
Alone
Though The Isley Brothers
Always won
Ronald’s sweet voice and Vernon
Doing “the Itch”
Sort of like Michael Jackson
Doing “the...
Native Title
my dead grandmother’s young
Japanese maple was uprooted stolen
last week scattered leaves crushed
under a stranger’s foot. to recover
...
More Poems about Social Commentaries
i love you to the moon &
not back, let’s not come back, let’s go by the speed of
queer zest & stay up
there & get ourselves a little
moon cottage (so pretty), then start a moon garden
with lots of moon veggies (so healthy), i mean
i was already moonlighting
as...
Self-Portrait with Sylvia Plath’s Braid
Some women make a pilgrimage to visit it
in the Indiana library charged to keep it safe.
I didn’t drive to it; I dreamed it, the thick braid
roped over my hands, heavier than lead.
My own hair was long for years.
Then I became...