✷
When we argue, the remains of my mother murmur with worry.
I hide in the garish light of the empty laundromat,
composing and reciting incantations. I gather artifacts,
and sing to my misgivings. Secreted in the stirring
of your name: rain like harp strings, blurry
under the arc of heaven’s gunmetal raiment.
Crickets creak in the parched throat of this supplicant,
and I cultivate a fond memory of phantom surgeries.
Let me secure the sutures, grip the forceps,
resuscitate a charred brittle filament.
Let me excavate a subterranean dream,
reanimate a lost science to chart the course
to the rhyming coastlines of our reciprocal continents,
then thirstily swallow whole the seas between.
✷──────────✷──────────✷
J. L. Yocum holds a bachelor’s degree in English Composition, with a concentration in Poetry, from the University of North Texas. His poems have appeared in Albatross, The Orchards Poetry Journal and ionosphere, and are forthcoming in The Big Windows Review. He lives in Brooklyn, where he earns his keep working in a fine-art-adjacent industry. He can be found on Bluesky at @jlyocum.com, on Mastodon at @jlyocum@mastodon.social and online at jlyocum.com.
