Jared Stanley

Oh, little dawn pavilion, how you yawn and grin

there’s a green catch of light your eyeglasses get

basic enthusiasms where the flowering grasses nod in the wind

another cruel ongoingness

fell asleep with a cock-shaped bookmark on my eyes

the sea is off somewhere by itself

previously unimagined inhabitants of spume

blood in your mouth did you taste it

A king wants to slit the clouds with his fingernail

I teach the kid to eat tubers and avoid roads

it won’t help when things get serious

snow melts in the gaps between pavers

we touch the ground like that, a faint scent (cool)

born in peacetime, fooled by permanence

let’s point a phone at the planets:

in a blurry picture, they touch on the lip of the horizon

On Saturday my son lost his sense of smell

it had no public meaning

on Monday my son

the song’s all unstrung

thin wire in the wind

lungs in Pompeii, lungs in plaster

crack the window enough to let him

glide through on a hairstreak’s back

Jared Stanley has had an unremarkable career as a low-level official, poet, and artist. He has written a few books, including EARS and Shall.

Posit