Jaden Schapiro

Jaden Schapiro (he/they) is a writer, poet, and cook based in the Hudson Valley. His/Their work appears and is forthcoming in Biscuit Hill, Collision, Conspiritu, and Creative Acts and can be reached at @jadenschapiro on Instagram.

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between between

i like the memory i have

of my mother

showing me how to respectively

flip someone off

—“read between the lines”—

she explained after a mel brooks movie

held up sandwiched fingers

her conceal-carry weapon

my next-day first grade

show and tell

you would never know she was esl

if you heard her

—b’emet—

you need to know

how she betweens

proposes prepositions

the language makes a between

of betweenness

we say it once in english; she says it again

—“ze benech l’vini”—

it’s only when

we listen to the language under

her language, we listen,

earcup, then Listen: (

english measures

meter betweeness

she considers the two

complicit in betweening

a finger is not

the offender

—it is wet violence in the body—

the finger needs someone

to offend

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We get it

The way an

Ant string is a rosary

A prayer-poem

Vishvakarma

And his tiny

            Indras

Thorax anaphoras  

Tiny legs and heads alliterate

They lead to something

            point that good sugar

                        mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm—

Doing something over

And over

And over

Until we get it

            we fucking get it

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[ ]

When the room is quiet 

enough shovels of sugar 

in a hot mug is a quick ruckus 

   a tip over  

      a sweep

         a hush

Interrogate it behind a lamp

            the sun 

shine, sliver through the stuff of you 

No coincidence 

sugar is rigid, repetitions 

carved uniform, rational, square

            -d off, full of incessant potential energy

contained. It strives white, but remembers 

dark, honey hues, molasses

to grow quick room for

ingestible sandy ideology 

            cane and beetroot confused 

            they don’t recognize themselves 

            those Bajan morning prickled hills 

(enough pins under foot— — —

you don’t feel anything) 

It’s nature, though 

it’s the stuff of nature 

it’s in your spoon 

it’s the stuff of you

Ground, boiled dry, 

we made our selves 

to eat 

what we wanted to be

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