Continuous
I give the emptiness in my chest to the sky,
sparks in my head to the night, although
I earmark the light in my eyes for the sand
of bay floors where the flounders live.
May my bones’ tiny archways coalesce
in the cool tunnels dug under border walls.
I donate the wishes caught in my throat
to the tongues of kids on hot streets. Songs
in orbit around my heart should be flung
360 to seed the musings of tent-dwellers
alongside the freeways. I send my longings
to fluff up the froth in the heads of beers
in the nowhere-from-here taverns. I offer
my summers’ joys to clear the airways
of little allergic and asthmatic coughers.
Let my horrors add shine to the spiderwebs
toddlers and cats find under end tables.
And may all my spaces return to continuous
with the full breadth of the world. The rest,
the atoms, can play life or dust as they will.
Jed Myers is author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), and four chapbooks, including Dark’s Channels (Iron Horse Literary Review Chapbook Award) and Love’s Test (winner, Grayson Books Chapbook Contest). Recognitions include Southern Indiana Review’s Editors’ Award, the Prime Number Magazine Award, and The Southeast Review’s Gearhart Prize. Poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, The American Journal of Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, The Greensboro Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Myers lives in Seattle and is Poetry Editor for Bracken.
In this issue:
Closer Look
Connie Wanek
Alan Abrams
Bruce Bennett
Matt Dennison
E.P. Fisher
Frederic Foote
Judith Fox
Peter Grandbois
Carrie Green
Will Greenway
Ted Jean
D.B. Jonas
Michael Lauchlan
Kurt Luchs
D.S. Martin
Wesley McNair
Marjorie Mir
George Moore
Jed Myers
Richard Newman
Angela Patten
Roger Pfingston
Michael Salcman
David Salner
Marjorie Stelmach
Patricia Waters
Erin Wilson