Ever Jones: October 2021 Poet of the Month

Ever Jones: October 2021 Poet of the Month
Photo: Joanna C. Valente

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

in a world so spun every heart is an enemy

 

            at the flower shop a white father & son select an exceptional

            bouquet for mom. they are dressed in full camouflage: desert-meets-

forest-meets-jungle-meets-america-meets-war. the pattern is tooth

and nail, pockets roomy enough for every extinction, each genocide-

attempt. see the grave-trenches honored with wildflowers. if i could

i’d drop this poem into the boy’s pocket, but i fear he’d kill me

for my gender resistant body, for the gentle touch of the unknown

that he will never be allowed

                                  to be

 

 

            my pen tip is a claw, a nail, and i admit

            that i jab myself every day for the admittance

            of my body. the violence of non-gender

            and the safety of white skin: a heart chamber

            seals & releases, seals & releases

 

 

did you know that a tusk is a tooth?

 

            an incisor for shadowing the landgrassestrees

 

                        i think that teeth have memory in the electric circuit

                        of their nerves, that nails are graves for the dead

                        continuously reimagining the matrix of being alive

 

 

                                                i am trying to write about school shootings

 

                                                                                    you see

 

 

                                    but my animal body

                                    but my animal body

 

            a tusk lacks enamel, pearly vs. ivory—but has growth rings

                                                                       around the blood

        around the original memory

 

            i think that’s what i mean to say about tenderness

i think that’s what i mean to say about power


Ever Jones (they/them) is a queer/trans poet, essayist and instructor living in Seattle, WA. Their forthcoming poetry collection, nightsong (Sundress Publications), is a transliberatory lyric of politics, nature and identity. They have published two other poetry collections, Wilderness Lessons (futurecycle) and a chapbook, Primitive Elegy (alicebluebooks). Ever won the Grand Prize for the Eco Arts Awards in 2014 & was a finalist for terrain.org’s 2013 poetry contest. They teach poetry and creative nonfiction writing at the University of Washington in Tacoma and are an instructor at Richard Hugo House. Their essays and poetry can be found at Tupelo Quarterly, Poecology, Bellingham Review, terrain.org, Cimarron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, CURA, Written River: A Journal of Eco-Poetics, Five Fingers Review, Whitefish Review and others. Visit their website at everjones.com.