but then do you watch as fog comes
to run its fingers rose- & lime-colored &
oyster-shell-jagged over your windows? / do you find
your poems affirming life in a dreary way —
pale apples literary casts of sunlight secondhand
sexual unities? / my refuge rises sturdy as an iris
yet I haven’t been doing very well lately
even whole & pious food upset my guts
& I twist & pinch little things into real-deal irritations
sunup’s runny gold / my forgetfulness leaks
as beneath me the new season palpitates
& daffodils vindicate the one already at work the one
who varies & varies & varies / it’s easy to get married
to halfway-promise half-way mention streaks of rain
on a bay window marking time / but
doesn’t each speech act snuff one old habit fill a single skeleton
with arrowhead flowertips fluttering / nothing wrong
in looking at you own life & saying as
to a hurt child: oh
honey / but sometimes the recognition is in thinking I’ll be
fine again soon / fooled into loving these changeful
phantasmagoria & my own vulgar bluster / once more adoring as
the rain does this raggy & disputed process streched
tight between two eternities / that white respiration
& breathing-sense to the day / that time of year
you stop counting signs of spring / sad sparrows /
who do you know that would choose the cross? /
not me certainly I’m as shot
full of holes as this stop sign / as covered over
by stinky blossoms / that feeling
of pointlessness seeping out from the small things /
Jay Aquinas Thompson (they/he) is a poet, essayist, and teacher with recent or forthcoming work in Neon Door, Essay Daily, Adroit, Guesthouse, and Poetry Northwest, where they’re a contributing editor. Their memoir The Resurrection Appearances: a Daybook is forthcoming from Gold Line Press. 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 Seattle, where they teach creative writing to public school students and incarcerated women. Find them on Substack and Twitter: @jayaquinas, and IG: @freshwater_merman.