Jay Besemer: 4 Poems

the passage

I.
the passage, sore eyes, slow
emptiness. the darkness
beneath these half-bunkers
is a border. no monument
can touch me; all the doors
are shut & flush w/the walls
here. i am nowhere, these
silences bigger than my heart.

​II.
concrete is a tree. concrete
is not a tree. not alive, not
open. some weapons-grade
bandshell illuminated with
dust. i see my house here,
the place where i grew up,
the land i roamed as a
child in search of nothing
i could name.

​III.
the horizon is deceptive.
tall presences emerge
from hazy absence. would
a body of meat have
meaning in these liquid
stone eruptions, these
teeth eating space in
endeavors of unknown
purpose? how does it
begin? how does it end?

​trees in your past

​owl, cyclops, silent hunting-
flight, your lonely nest far
behind you.

​in fright or in elation, the
people know your cold
meaning, your secret
interior & the stone blood
that sustains you.

​trees in your past are as
numerous as prey.

​black spoons

​night has made it
around the world once more

​& the diamonds have burrowed
into our hands
& out again

​leaving deep furrows
in flesh, in memory
in language on the tongue

​words removed
like thorns from soft stems
to give to girls
who run after horses

words removed
from black spoons & slid
covertly into jars
sealed with wax & pulp
from insects

​thoughts detained
like children kept
& kept & kept some more

​there the missing words
are found
hidden in children’s
shadows
clinging to their torn
pockets

the diamonds
gouging deep
deep
taking words away
​until new words
can be bled out
formed into stone

​& cast into a heap
a cairn
or a shelter
shifting
from one moment
to the next

​peppered with rotting
grain

​the mallet

​when
trembling
on the edge of it

​the horseshoe sky
the mallet

​the parents
of your wall

​horseshoe
alive with mountain
mistakenly
bordered

​they will never tire
of your water
they will drink of it
they will drink & drink

​turn their backs
to you
& grow loud
& exhausting

​you are trembling

Poet and artist Jay Besemer is the author of numerous poetry collections, including Men & Sleep (Meekling Press, forthcoming 2023) and Theories of Performance (The Lettered Streets Press, 2020). He was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Transgender Poetry, and a finalist for the 2017 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Jay was included in the groundbreaking anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics. Find him online at www.jaybesemer.net and on Twitter @divinetailor.