Scott Alexander Jones

from “elsewhere”

That finger on your temple is the barrel / of my raygun— / / That wretched dull resonance / / breaching walls where windows once were, here / at the end of all things / / tells us nothing / / we haven/t already been told / / regarding nightjars— / / That eyelid slit of light / beneath the bathroom door at the end of the hallway / / yellow & yellowish & yellowing / as deciduous leaves / / come winter / / says one of us remains / awake at this androgynous hour / / lighting candles meant to conjure azaleas. / Call it evening despite / / our blue proximity to morning— / / Blue as your tattered peacoat I always mistook for black— / Choose any definition / / of blackout: / / A scarlet pulsing of stoplights / or the scar in my abdomen from the failed / / appendectomy of a cyclone / / fence— / / And if I am sleeping thru the lullabies of a summer / storm, you are screaming / / an arsenal of auburn / / cellos into hiding— / / Your lipstick desperately flamingo. / Soundlessly agape as Civil War daguerreotypes. / / We have arrived / / at the scene of the film where the first bullets hail down— / All sound cuts out— / / Your larynx / / banished brailleward / / by explosions in the sky. / Toward the more taciturn outskirts of: / / anywhere but here— / / The nowheres / / we/ll no longer witness together— / Scouring burnt lexicons in search of the perfect word for: / / murmurs of wind / / caught in a vacant stairwell—

{Excerpt by Scott Alexander Jones}