GONE (into)

I’m still learning
how to leave
a puzzle complete
without grieving
all the missing pieces
I lost to make it
beautiful.

THERE’S A RIOT GOING ON (EKPHRASIS)

for Sly & the Family Stone

I thread a row of daises
between each stripe on your head
and name you freedom
again. It may be wrong
to put faith in a system
that’s done nothing but try
to weed people like me
out, so maybe this
is the perfect time to plant myself
in, so seamless, so unassuming,
like a speech written then ripped
apart, thrown to the birds
as feed. Listen,
if the blue in your corner
bleeds, everybody gets watered,
and if it stays,
that means a sky remains
always above us. Your generation is teaching you
there’s not a thing wrong
with crying, so cry,
America, cry right
onto yourself and all your
lost lovers. The root of the word
disaster
is a star coming
apart and you’ve got more
than a handful
in the palm of your left
corner. So explode,
America, explode. It’s the only
way you know how to
evolve.

STONEFRUIT

for K

Lithopedion (n): A rare phenomenon which occurs when a fetus dies during an abdominal pregnancy, is too large to reabsorbed back into the body, and calcifies as a “stone” on the outside as a foreign body reaction, shielding the mother’s body from the dead tissue of the fetus.

Apple of your eye, you tell me
I’m the core and I hollowed you out.
Stripped out the sweet, squeezed
blood from the wounds I made,
the nails, the hammer, the walls,
the carpenter, the picture frames
all burned down. A house blown up
bit by bit, bite by bite
I exploded every light
one for each lullaby you sang me
to sleep.
A sleepwalker in the dark
with a rifle for a mouth,
I taunted the moon to sing
and she did,
was told not to step on a crack
and I did.
A tree grows a branch for a robin to nest
and a hatchet grows instead.
No one buries it, no one
touches it, no one
talks about it. They all want to
chop it down. One day,
you hang a picture of us
from its blade.
In it, you’re smiling and I’m eating
something dark, a plum, deep purple
white on the inside.
Somehow it has no core.
You tell me how beautiful it is
anyway.

Brendan Jacob is a poet and model originally from Detroit, Michigan. He received his BFA in Theater Performance: Acting from The University of Michigan and has been published in literary magazines across the country such as Fearsome Critters, Soundings East and Levitate. In 2020, he was selected as one of West Hollywood's Top Pride Poets. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California.