the sun made itself to burn
a long death, a cloud around the equator
my waist
a stone
the poem stalls
tender skin
horizons want resources for the human wish
see the sun lower golden pennies
see me walk there offering peonies
an invocation
through a sheath of violence orbiting my body, my body
the sex of sunlight
the gender of bone
i see dead
trans bodies
as crushed stars on snowshadows
(there’s a feeling here
don’t name it)
i see the living
trans bodies
as crushed stars putting away the hammer
raven’s wings press the living
into evening’s long shadows
that unhinge from the meadow as coffin lids
might open for the one with sorrow
have you wondered how the raven’s human voice
is an usher
in this stadium of suns?
the shadows walk—or is it float?—to the creek
where the salmon were, and kneel into its scrapbook
of lives neatly fixed at the corners
the light of billion-year-old plankton unfolds
its singular cell into a mirror of spines
have you wondered why we follow the raven
to the other side of night
while it has little care for our created
world, spare a few scraps
on the surface of our knowing?
Coyote howl softens the air into aria
& an apple thumps the ground with nightsong
we don’t know why the leaf suddenly shivers
or which paw snapped the blackened stick
but we stay in their echoes until the wound
passes like a sieve of humid air
i am loved here
in the moon’s half-phase
you shining the stars for me
making the galaxy just another walk to the sink
in this new light an owl settles on the ledge beyond sight
giving me a silence far more salient than any word
in this new night pronouns unbecome the body
letters shake loose their coats into ravens
slanting syntax under feathers
pull each system from your/self
noxious weeds strangling the cedar
punctuation’s teeth
sunk
in the ground
& unwind the human gaze leveraging gravity
into supremacy
when Goddess Diamond picks up the letters
in the new sunrise
see a prism of curves
each serif a hooking talon
every comma a new way to feel rain
Ever Jones (they/them pronouns) is a queer/trans writer, artist, and instructor based in Seattle. They are the author of three poetry collections, including nightsong (Sundress Publications), in which these poems can be found. They are professor of creative writing at the University of Washington Tacoma. Please find them at everjones.com.
Read more poetry by Ever Jones appearing in Terrain.org: “Red Song of the Passenger Pigeon” and four poems.
Header photo by CS Stock, courtesy Shutterstock.
