Ever Jones: October 2021 Poet of the Month
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.