Jill Jones



The Rear View

and lost, skimming
the tinkle on line
the benchmark is
a dumbcluck again

— wrong, it’s a coyote vibraphone
a layette, a kitchen filled with
fireworks and lobbyists

so, avoid the normal, the natural
it's not as if it's a subcommittee
of outcasts

they play, dudes, they play
at the roadblock again among
passersby, robins, leatherette
rampages, the essentials

of the gone, the sum
of being a superstar or
you’ve lost control again



Not My Favourite Occurrence

In footnote air that’s a bliss
over a trembling hillock and its unknowns.
You guffaw, don’t be listless or cooler,
leave that for your changeovers.
Go get hatchbacks and fingerprint distribution.

Oilmen tear-jerk the rosettes
from your waistband,
there are partisans in cul-de-sacs,
shaking rusty drapery from the tarpaulin.

O, ebb and hypothesis,
the massive singing in a drought.
All the while the roadster shuffles.
The handcuff hushes its parameter
as it must.



The Weight

I go out without saying
with all my haul to come back
in between, criticism and measure
the timing of the lights
how cold the upright steel how cold
the headlines pile up just like saying
there’s less difference now
though bread seems various at a distance
packets are wondrous as we attend
within the fleeting
you hear my shoes do their own talking
on terrazzo and perhaps there’s fair price to pay
perhaps it makes no difference
the blue bag fills with supermarket krill
it’s automatic in the queue of special words
you lift the coin onto your tongue
this is the expectation
I only get so far praying extra
the walk back seems longer than my feet
can I spit money into the dying pool



Jill Jones most recent book is Senses Working Out, a Vagabond Press Rare Object chapbook, published in 2012. A new full-length book, Ash Is Here, So Are Stars, will be published by Walleah Press later in 2012. She is currently collaborating with photographer Annette Willis and composer/sound designer Solange Kershaw on a new multi-media project. Her poems have been translated into Chinese, Dutch, French, Italian, Czech and Spanish.

 
 
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