POEMS FROM JESUSLAND
RESONANCE
resonance.
resonance x doyalike
resonance x genesis x not allowed
resonance (slowed + reverb)
resonance.
cyberpunk tiktok edit.
brutalist building, siberian snow.
japanese temple, rain, voice clip
from the game Life Is Strange.
a forest at night.
midwest emo and pacific northwest tree.
dark fantasy bright fantasy maybe dim fantasy is next.
frutiger aero background and song
that sounds like CD rot of another song.
this is the smallest possible dose.
this is the fictional future haunted
by that rosy utopian past.
this is what the dream was supposed to be.
this is the high-speed maglev train
from Boston to Los Angeles
this is a house for everyone.
this is endless buildings, endless neon,
walking through the clouds at night.
this is my bedroom and the beeping
of machines.
my finger slips, swiping.
i look up to see the beaten parking lot
outside my window.
a hurricane is coming.
the putrid normalcy of now.
a noise.
my eyes drift back to my phone
which is playing “In A Sentimental Mood”
over a sketchbook animation.
haunted, always.
ghosts around us forever.
resonance.
a sound moves through space
and through time.
resonance x genesis x doyalike (slowed + reverb)
“My heart, I never feel
I never see
I never know
Oh, heart
And then it falls
And then I fall
And then I know”
the city made in blender
never sleeps.
time collapsing or collapsed.
even writing this,
my eyes are frying in blue light.
billions have died to put
lithium and panic in my pocket.
late at night, as i stare
at these slick fragments,
i picture the light taking eight
long minutes to return to the sun.
resonance.
AGENT
i’ve been reading too much
anthropology, sociology, philosophy,
biology, theology, et cetera.
i want you to kiss me
until i am no longer an intersection,
a crosshairs of collapsing games,
an agent in a system.
i want you to name me
in sighing breaths, remind me
i am a person, even in these
Rube Goldberg machines of living.
i need you to claw
the skin off my back
so i can know it’s real.
laugh all you want, but i’m beginning
to suspect i was born to do things.
i want you as an action.
DUCK TAPE
Daughter says it with a mouth crammed full of baby teeth: “duck tape!”
The crow’s feet crinkle in the corners of her mother’s eyes. “Duc-tah, with a T. Duc-tah. Ducks live in ponds, duc-tahs live in walls.”
Mother realizes this is the first year with a real school year and a real summer. Before, they sort of smeared together, except for the heat.
Daughter loathes the idea of anything living in walls, and recognizes the “duc-tah syllables. “Duc-tah like Doctor Mia?”
Mother chuckles. “No, I was just being silly. The T is very quiet on the end, not big and showy.” Her group chat for Book Club lights up her phone.
Daughter hopes there will be no more words to learn regarding strange things with quiet letters living in walls, though she suspects there will be many to come. She returns to the silver tape in her hand, sticking and unsticking it until it droops like tired tinsel from an old Christmas tree.
Illustrations by 130.