Jessie Jones

Jessie Jones is a writer from Montreal. She is the author of The Fool (2020, icehouse poetry), which was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award from the League of Canadian Poets and a finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry from the Quebec Writer's Federation. Her work has appeared in publications across North America, the UK, and in Europe. She is currently at work on a second poetry collection and an experimental, collaborative novel.

---

Exiled from the ideal city

“…if she will only prove her title to exist in a well-ordered State we shall be delighted to receive her—we are very conscious of her charms; but we may not on that account betray the truth.” — Book III, The Republic

Distant photosynthesis, deeply steeped

sencha, algae in ice. All we called spring.

As such, counting steps in meters, us metrical

purveyors, cast out of the city.

Pretenders.

Told to return when no

longer tailors.

The suit being a poem.

Had it been dinner

they’d have called us cooks.

Curse words.

Catch-as-catch-

can, white-knuckling

the palinode.

The right

to a changed mind

a decadence.

Chthonic daylight. Neither glamour

nor phantasm. Only buzzing

flies in the mind. Noon tipping wine

Shadows down the back.

Wondering not justice

enough, thinking

not empire.

Donning voluminous coats, wax

moustaches, eating

the marzipan peach.

Leading no infantries.

συγνώμη

Floricane-fruiting, summer

bearing words claimed our throats.

Feverish entreaties, the verb’s heartburn,

orb through which everything seen

curves. Reflecting pools of civilian beauty.

August afternoons.

There were also rhodelite fields littered

with spears. Limbs split, honeycomb heads

cored loose. Silence a corseted scream. All

we called history.

Cursed words.

Only cowards recount, say what

they cannot know. Only devils

live in another’s clothes.

From here, the words no longer stench

or fuss. Rather, thunder. Racket cave

walls, ride the smooth canyon, call

the heavenly fist down.

We tell ourselves.

It’s forever and it lasts,

the mimetic covenant.

It’s forever and raggeds

the mind. Blooms fool

and fall to paste, while gadflies

drive their spikes, touching

tendon, muscle, blood-want,

implanting an image not

seen or dreamed.

Lean-to. Words dune.

New forgeries droning

in a fly-black mind.

A drop rolls from each cut.

It mustn’t, but it does.

---

This isn’t all of it

To always be around the coming and going. Reading everything, knowing

nothing. Turning my frown out.

Ant in the milk. Pith of history. Little fire burning for sincerity

of meaning. Fixating on the single frame

until it trembles. What can survive such attention?

The rib of light in the east saying day is. Fire. Fanfare. A vision

knit of mistakes accruing weight. Seeing through to the past

and after, seeing both with absolute power, knowing nothing. The countries

on the map with their non-stick surfaces. Very long

and very slow, their slide. They call it progress.

Interstices when I wanted to scream and couldn’t. Couldn’t cry, couldn’t

make a sound. Couldn’t deliver speech in perfect

diction. Couldn’t say it like I wasn’t afraid of it. Couldn’t, can’t, why

make it past, fix the stones around the value, knowing

Nothing of ruins and their failed attempts to last. I cannot say when

the hourglass tipped upright. I have known

it’s flatness all my life. But now granules pool upwards. In

me. Evelyn calls me a timepiece.

I’ve never eavesdropped on the deep nothing. The end

ties a gold ribbon at my wrist.

The light goes off at six and with it a sunny temperament.

Against the is and was I formed an am. All my weight

in their way. Even a wisp itches. The years have taken

Whatever was theirs to begin with. I thought there

would be more. There is.

---

Gingham was the sky

A colour you don’t know is blue until you lose a tooth or

an eye

Nor that colours change

based on mood—a surging purple

marble foretelling ardour became a sweet

dense bruise. And amber

your anger. Uranium your want. A bleed

between your angry want.

The vibrant architect was possibility,

to go. The road leading home had always

been gold, the city jewelled. Your shoes

were new, true, and they suited you.

Poppies bloomed, black yolk, sunny-

side up, souring sleep. And you rose with the snow

intending to speak of the threshold,

the electric beyond

in a farewell note.

But it was the facts that bore

fruit. When you spoke it was of technicians

mistakes

the director’s lead hand

lead paint

insanity’s dance

the woman burned in her wickedness

(not escape/escape/escape)

so you could say

you’d changed

and how

and exactly

in what way.

---