Rinsed
it’s raining
the grass stretches across
everything, newly
dark.
while rolling out my thoughts I look
at where the light goes, memory
of your gaze catching
of my being
a special occasion, a shock fever
a momentary lapse of strength
on your part. I’m out now,
in nature where you can’t touch me
and god,
jesus
fuck
everything is so still here,
it just stuns me.
Sticking
I had a white dress once and a summer
of necking back pink things and getting
very wet, my skin tight and attracting
little bits of grass.
There are poems in me that spin like coins
I am a hybrid swan, these days
I look at my dresses, clean and glowing
like teeth in the dark.
I take a sleeve of one
as if courting it.
When did I learn to care like this,
immolate myself and call people losers
call men losers, have them put their fingers
in my mouth so I can’t say oh well
anymore.
The sleeve is torn and I tease the rip
I look at how the fabric melted
under the moths.
I hold my old world to my face and try crying
find I can’t, go down to make dinner.
Spring poem
I was doing a great job of being graceful
I got flattened once or twice by circumstance
but that’s what happens,
you look at the cherry blossoms and sometimes
they are pink stars, snags of beautiful
candy-dyed hair from your mysterious youth
other days you look at the cherry blossoms and they
are nothing good to you, wilting pancreases
suspended above the ground, casting
horrible shadows on the pale road.
That’s all drama. The fact is,
words have been uncommonly hard to listen to lately. That doesn’t
mean they aren’t worth saying, but it’s likely I will have to ignore you.
__________
Rosa Jones is a writer living in Glasgow. Their work has been published by
Gutter Journal, Ache, SPAM, Banshee, Zarf, Abridged, 3 of Cups Press and
Burning House Press. They co-founded the Glasgow branch of the Small
Trans Library, a lending library and social resource for trans and non-binary
people
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