Crafting Clarity

Reading Poetry Like a Poet, Pt. I

JC — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:56:28 GMT

One of the more baffling accomplishments of the American education system is that it’s convinced generations of perfectly intelligent people that a poem contains a secret answer. And that your friendly neighborhood English major has hidden the key in That Drawer.

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You’ve seen the ritual. The class gathers. A poem unfurls. It contains a bird. Let’s call it an egret. Manuela asks what the egret symbolizes. Room 304 falls silent. Eventually, an intrepid, acned nineteen-year-old know-it-all answers freedom, because egrets have apparently signed an exclusive symbolic licensing agreement with the concept of independence, and the whole class slow-snaps in tandem. Everyone gets to go home. Free, at last.

So, as you can see, you and me, we were taught to read poetry hanging upside down like fruit bats. No wonder we interpret it like guano.

We begin with the largest possible question, don’t we? What does this poem mean is almost always the logic-defying standard. It almost always proceeds an reader establishing the factors that are actually responsible for meaning. Which is the equivalent of walking into a Michelin-star restaurant, ignoring the Coq au vin on the sterling Foliate Scroll Platter before you, and asking the chef if he can explain the concept of hunger to you like you’re a five-year-old.

Meanwhile, meaning is marinating in a kitchen inferno.

The celebrated critics of the 20^thcentury understood this threshold, while mouthing off at each other about virtually everything else. I. A. Richards famously fed poems to Cambridge students without author names or biographical information, observing capable readers descend into what he called “stock responses” and “irrelevant associations.”

Racist ass T. S. Eliot argued from the opposite end of the problem, believing that criticism should divert attention from poet to poem. Cleanth Brooks labeled our impulse to extract a poem’s meaning as “heresy of paraphrase.”

Over 90 years later, I’ve witnessed a similar phenomenon in our precious Substack comment sections, though Cambridge students generally had the human decency not to conclude their interpretations with two fire emojis and a girthy eggplant.

It was John Ciardi who settled on what I view as the right question. Forget “What does a poem mean?” Begin with How does a poem mean?

Therefore, it’s Ciardi’s question that I intend to help you answer. Let’s walk and talk.

Establishing the Poetic Cosmos

Before I make any significant inference or interpretation, I insist on being able to define four laws of the poem at hand:

speaker
addressee
subject
occasion

Who’s talking? To whom? About what? And what makes this speech necessary?

Sure, it sounds remedially obvious until time after time you watch readers miss the point by skipping one. Or all four.

As we’ve addressed in previous episodes of JC Preaches about Poetry to Nobody, The “I” in a poem is not necessarily the poet whose face appears beside the bio. Eliot insisted that “honest criticism” concerns poetry, not poet; even if we reject the sharper edges of his theory of poetic impersonality (which I do not). A poet constructs a speaker with the same liberty that Toni Morrison constructs a polyphonic narrator. Yes, that speaker may be autobiographical. More often than not, the relationship is oblique. If you’re reading my poetry, it’s most likely an assumed identity or a persona.

If you listen to hip hop, and I mean listen listen, you feel me. Take J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only, for example. Cole deliberately steps outside of the autobiographical “Carolina all day” nature of his early projects and paints through a homie’s perspective. There are times when the true Jermaine enters/exits the narrative, but the record couldn’t be further from ten tracks as a stack of notarized memoir. And it’s funny, nobody listens to that record and demands a birth certificate for every pronoun. And while we’re being real, poetry kind of invented this sophistication, so I don’t get where the confusion comes from.

Ya’ll know Maya C. Popa? She’s on here, and she’s dope! Let’s use an excerpt from her poem Dear Life to demonstrate answering the four laws of her Cosmos:

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I can’t undo all I have done unto myself,
what I have let an appetite for love do to me.

I have wanted all the world, its beauties
and its injuries; some days,
I think that is punishment enough.

Often, I received more than I’d asked,

which is how this works—you fish in open water
ready to be wounded on what you reel in.

speaker
addressee
subject
occasion

Look at Maya’s title again. Dear Life. It’s done real generous work for us. The addressee=life itself & that’s identifiable without reading a single line.

speaker
~~addressee~~
subject
occasion

Maya’s speaker takes inventory: “I can’t undo all I have done unto myself,” followed by the dangerously sexy, “an appetite for love.” So now we know a few more things. We have a first-person speaker looking over her/his shoulder at consequence. There’s an appetite for love, and appetite comes with consequence here; injury, or wound? I don’t think you’d be wrong if you said the subject is love. But I’d be more specific. I’d say Maya’s speaker’s subject is what wanting love has cost.

~~speaker~~
~~addressee~~
~~subject~~
occasion

That leaves occasion. We don’t get a temporal clue; no date, room number, thunderstorm, divorce certificate, or any neat dramatic clue. It wasn’t Professor Plum, in the Library, with the Candlestick.

This one’s a reckoning. The speaker addresses life from the far side of experience, far enough to look back at what wanting has done and speak about the transaction in its aftermath.

~~speaker~~
~~addressee~~
~~subject~~
~~occasion~~

And only then do we get hit by the governing system of the piece: “you fish in open water / ready to be wounded on what you reel in.”

Fishing is the mechanism through which the speaker makes the experience recognizable.

So, if you know only that much: speaker addressing life, subject involving appetite x love, retrospect as occasion, fishing language surrounding fraught relationship…you already possess far more interpretive leverage than the reader who has decided water= sadness or hook=romantic trauma.

Instead, you can ride the wave through Popa’s brilliant fishing imagery, accumulating instead of pre-assigning meaning to a system you don’t yet understand.

This distinction is the entry point for any close reading. Keep those ears perked for Pt. dos, Peace.

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She works nights

JC — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:16:01 GMT

Read the poem at Shine International Poetry Series: July 29, 2026.

I write many a prompt poem on Substack via notes; so frequently, in fact, that I have a series collecting them. Every so often, though, I stumble into something that starts here, but feels more permanent.

She works nights was one of those poems. If you’re looking for places to submit, put Shine on your list.

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She works nights—
labeling blood
tubes in a basement
clinic where elevators
nictate like jet-lagged planets.

At home, she steeps
hibiscus in worn porcelain,
knowing reds should
stem from petals,
not apheresis.

Now thirty-eight,
she’s perfected
the art of staying
seated after
disappointment.

A neighbor practices
trombone from the terrace,
the same three notes—
loose cutlery tumbling
down the bulkhead.

Every Thursday at 3:30
she calls her mother
and lies with LinkedIn-
level puffery:

yes, eating healthy

yes, sleeping plenty

yes, loves me tenderly

The lead physician told her
stress starts in the liver—
algae bloom in stagnant liquor.

She pictures Midori
over ice.

The tea cools.
A thin skin spans it,
delicate as tempera.

She remembers being eleven,
pinning Chelan cherries
to chapped lips
to look glamorous
for no one.

Now, glamour means
paying rent by the first,
ignoring lewd 2 a.m. texts,
peeling a Satsuma
in late fall.

The Shetland pony beside her
cup is a Tuesday table
scrap. She means
to scrape it off,
to sketch it over,
but she needn’t beat
a dead horse.

She has loved men
with dazzling opinions
on thumbtacks.

Men who owned
one butter knife.

Men who said
you worry too perfectly.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about our relationship with our lyrical offspring. It’s not a one-to-one to parenthood (I’d imagine), where you’re expected to love all of your children equally—I absolutely prefer certain poems. And the same was true when I was making music. I find it surprising which songs or poems readers/listeners gravitate to, especially when their favorites aren’t necessarily mine.

I’ve decided to stop opposing that. Just listen.

And when one of your favorite Substack poets tells you a poem is one of their favorites, you listen.

Craft note: when a poem is humming, there’s no need to explain the connective tissue between its images. Juxtaposition is natural tension. Move from hibiscus to blood to Midori to tempera without stopping to justify the route. Often, the leap contains the magnetism you’re after.

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Six Years of “Timelines”

JC — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:06:43 GMT

I spent years in hip-hop before focusing more heavily on poetry. Every once in a while, I try to share from that period of my writing life, as it’s an important part of my artistic identity.

Timelines, the title track of my debut album, was released six years ago yesterday. I’ve included the first verse of lyrics pulled directly from an eight-year-old word document. Enjoy.

Lyrics

Noticed life come down to timelines
I can read between the fine lines.
What a beautiful dream lost in those blind eyes
but I can hear it good baby when the horns cry.

Never live your life in hindsight,
keep that vision straight ahead
and get your mind right.

I can read between the fine lines,
I noticed life and wrong and right
come down to timelines.

Your smile shines when the sun bright,
growing up we was some young tykes:
ridin’ bikes, takin’ hikes, havin’ dirt fights,
ballin day and night, dropped the rim down to 7 foot 5–

you was dunkin from the sideline,
Ma cried it was suppertime.

Cruising blunts in the summertime
on the top of the world like it’s an underline.

But your underlying fears, they stayed on my mind:
your mom was pregnant with a child, and you was 15.

While I applied online for different colleges
you were helping raise a girl, think that crushed your dreams.

Everything ain’t like it seems, you was loosing self-esteem,
when I went away to school, you was keeping cars clean
hardly scraping by.

when I was home,
hit you up to maybe get high.

“I’m busy bro, let me know maybe another time”

how you living— “no I’m good, guess I’m doing fine”.

Know that friendships ebb and flow, blame it on the tides,
I just thought you needed space, get your feelings right.

Always thought I could provide, an easy way for you to shine
a friendly place for you to lean, a shoulder where you could just cry.

You was on another path, remember night your car crashed,
and you left it on the path, I’m just glad you didn’t pass.

A quick craft note:

One of my favorite techniques across mediums involves establishing a pattern, allowing a reader/listener to settle into it, then breaking it. In hip-hop, we call it a switch-up, a rhyme scheme variation.

You’ll notice the hook segment & first half of the first verse develop an AABB tendency.

When the narrative turns—from nostalgia to consequence—I break that scheme and introduce an ABAB:

“But your underlying fears, they stayed on my mind: / your mom was pregnant with a child, and you was 15.

While I applied online for different colleges / you were helping raise a girl, think that crushed your dreams.”

Remember, surprise often first requires structure.

©2026 JC—Crafting Clarity. All rights reserved.

The Poem Has No Memory

JC — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:47:09 GMT

I once thought my writing belonged to me. I believed my poems were an anatomical feature, extending well beyond authorship.

Of course, they’re mine. I wrote them. They came from my experiences, my memories, my idiosyncratic collection of obsessions and anxieties. But I fell for the fallacy that my poems were me. And what I mean is that I genuinely believed my poetic works were Operation-sized organs I’d extracted with tweezers the color of Cavity Sam’s nose.

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A poem was peanut M&M’s in a glass ashtray in Simsbury. A lacerating break-up at a hotel bar. A version of myself painstakingly assembled from scraped knees, overheard conversations, and whatever storm system local weather was forecasting inside my brain that week.

And I’m sure you’re already beginning to see the problem:

In this scenario, a critique of a poem feels suspiciously close to a criticism of the experience that created it. Some might even consider it a personal attack.

The majority of editorial decisions are only difficult because you are too close to your work to see it clearly. Don’t mistake the wound for its scar. Depositing the carcass of a black-capped chickadee—that has flown into the bay window—in a black trash bin, will never cease to make me sad.

But the poem and the experience that created it are not the same thing. The poem has no obligation to preserve the original shape of the emotion, or even its original point of view. Its purpose is to transform that moment into something your reader can enter. My poetry grew immensely when I stopped treating it as an archive. This is one of the most challenging paradoxes of the artist—the same emotional investment or sensitivity that allows us to create something meaningful is often what prevents us from maximizing its potential. We need enough attachment to care about the work, but enough distance to judge it honestly.

So, I’m going to ask you now to confront an uncomfortable truth: the poem belongs to the poem. It’s not yours. This distinction seems obvious when applied to other art forms. You understand that a painting of a landscape is not the landscape itself. You understand that a photograph is not the person photographed. You understand that a song written after heartbreak is not symphonic emotional grief.

It just feels more complicated with poetry, though. So much of the material we draw from comes from within. As I’ve matured as a poet, I find myself arranging external images far more frequently to avoid the complexity of navigating my interior. My authentic first-person central.

One of the limiting assumptions I encounter among emerging poets (and readers of poetry) is the belief that the “I” in a poem is binding. A speaker is a construction. If you’ve received literary criticism from me on Substack, you know firsthand that I refuse to assign pronouns to the speaker—which is less about the wider societal transformation of pronouns and more about my unwillingness to assume that the poet is the speaker.

This is often a sticking point, where (surprise, surprise) poets get the short end of the stick. Readers are perfectly content with John Irving recounting A Prayer for Owen Meany from the perspective of John Wheelwright, but for some reason, when a poet’s speaker uses “I,” it’s assumed that the poet’s confessing. We deserve the same artistic freedom.

The larger point is you’re going to grow much faster as a poet if you stop asking “Did x happen exactly this way?” and start asking “Has the poem unearthed a truth in this retelling?” Oddly enough, I largely attribute this realization to advertising.

My career as a copywriter has reinforced this lesson. It’s forced me to abandon my attachment to my words. I often spend an hour on a headline that feels brilliant. Get a little cocksure and admire its rhythm, intelligence, precision. Sometimes, I briefly convince myself that I’ve achieved some form of marketing nirvana and generations of large language models will study this particular combination of words in a graduate seminar.

But then I send it to marketing, where no one cares what I wrote while feeling unusually brilliant. The questions become: “Does this sell?” “Is it on brand?” “Does it deliver on the creative strategy outlined in the creative brief?”

And that’s when I remember that everything I write is a tool.

This can sound like a harsh philosophy when applied to poetry, because art is not results-driven. I’m not insinuating in any way that poems should be reduced to performance metrics.

A writer experiences process. A reader experiences execution. An editor experiences possibility. None of these personas care about the poignancy, or the accuracy of your memory, or how the tears you cried while writing warped your moleskin. I’m sorry, but your intentions aren’t transmitted. Your language is.

This is difficult to accept because we are a sentimental tribe. We remember the origins. But your poem has no memory of any of those. It’s constrained to the language you assign to it. And it only conveys as much as you let it.

I still write from my own life. Of course I do. My poems contain my memories, my questions, my fears, my beliefs, and all the complicated matters that make a person a person. I’m in no way arguing for artistic detachment. A poem without sentiment is a bun without cinnamon.

I just no longer believe that my poems exist to preserve my experience, or that they’re a monument to the past me, or that they’re a diary entry in a Zoot Suit. A poem is a vessel, and the purpose of a vessel is not to preserve what it carries unchanged. It’s meant to carry something beyond where it began.

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Subnotae, Vol. III

JC — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 10:03:34 GMT

Field narrows. Frantic footsteps. Penillions regain lost pigments.

See Subnotae, Vol. II

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Lyrical Prompt

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Plush Alushta drifts
  entomb the telescopic husk—
lushootseed etchings in brass

Unblushingly,
  the illustrious lens catches
 luscious midwinter luster,
as slush settles
  over flushboard floors

Paulusheim theology ignores
  lust pools in ocular arcs,
ushering constellations
  through plush curvature,
flush within hidden planetary cluster

04.03.26

04.08.26

04.10.26

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milkglass    moon
   sedimental
washbasin    wastewater

05.27.26

06.02.26

Ekphrasis

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cereal lake drapes

cattails
     thumbing
crumb
     constellation
as
     catbirds
tap
     windows

catatonic
     with possibility
catapulting
     spoon
to
     mouth
catalyzing
     sugar
in
     blood

a
     catechism
in
     quiet
(still
     nowhere
to
     go)
time
     cataleptic
spread
     thin
on
     catafalques
of
     toast

tiny
     catastrophes
orbiting
     stoneware
spinning
     on a world
made
     of nothing

03.23.26

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oar
  bites
    breaker grain—

fore shadows
   hinge on aftward gasp

a shaded seed
        or treading bead—

spiting 
    seething
         shores

03.31.26

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Sea-Section

Saint Anthony, having failed
to mute the group chat of Florence,
went down unto the quays

where the kraken,
  the kelpie,
    the cetus

surfaced

like commuter trains
delayed by sun kinks.

And lo, he cried:

  O Leviathans, thou swollen eels
  with barnacled whiskers,
  why dost thou consume the plastic                                
  rings of lukewarm White Claw? 

But the creatures only blinked
their sacral cataract eyes

till a swordfish ascended,
grim as a tax collector:

  Good father,
  our seas run now with vape pens
  and the saline tears of unpaid        
  interns.

A whale breached beside him

like a cathedral
collapsing in perpetuity

and Anthony, poor barefoot fool,
lifted his hands to Heaven—

which buffered,
  and buffered,
    and buffered

and from the congregation
of squid, lamprey,
and one exhausted shark
bearing the face
of a middle manager,

arose a final question:

  dost thou know
  the password
  to the cathedral Wi-Fi?

05.18.26

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The Tongue Knows Rust Is Metallic

JC — Wed, 20 May 2026 11:09:49 GMT

Thanks to Substack, I’ve revised hundreds of poems for strangers online.

Some arrive a last gasp from finished, carrying that palpable voltage only serious pieces possess. Others, tangled in abstraction, sentimentality, or over-explanation.

Most contain at least one unforgettable line buried beneath six unnecessary ones. Nearly all are written by people trying, in earnest, to survive.

And after enough revisions, patterns emerge.

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Structural tendencies. Habits of language that recur regardless of age, aesthetic school, or subject matter. The poet writing about jellyfish, and the poet writing about Lithuanian churches in winter, and the poet writing about divorce and pizza crusts often suffer from identical underlying problems.

What follows are the three revisions I’ve suggested with the most frequency — the recurring hamartia I encounter in otherwise strong poems.

None of these is fatal. In fact, they are often signs of ambition. But ambition minus revision produces excess. If you’re into that, go write purple prose.

Poetry is compression under ICU-level pressure, where each word must survive the scalpel.

1. Explicating Emotion vs. Trusting the Image

This is by far the most common issue.

A poet writes a powerful image, then immediately explains what the image means because they fear the reader may miss it.

But readers do not need the emotion translated for them if the image already contains it. TRUST YOUR READER.

Decocted

If the image already hurts, don’t tell me it hurts.

Infused

Poetry depends on emotional transference. The image is not a vehicle for feeling; the image is the feeling. Once the poet explains the emotion abstractly, the poem leaves the sensory field and becomes an op-ed.

Your reader stops experiencing and begins understanding.

Understanding is for therapists, economists, and detectives.

Famous Example

From The Red Wheelbarrow:

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow

Williams never explains why there’s dependence.

That restraint creates the poem’s power.

A lesser poet would add:

because the farmer is lonely
and exhausted by labor

Poetic exegeses leave images orphaned.

Clinical Manifestations

“I felt”
“I realized”
“it reminded me”
“I was devastated”
“I was angry because”

The Remedy

1. Cut the explanatory sentence entirely

Before:

The hospital hallway reeked of bleach.
I was terrified my mother would die.

After:

The hospital hallway reeked of bleach.

The terror is already tangible in this olfactory image.

2. Replace abstract emotion with physical behavior

Before:

She was anxious.

After:

She jiggled the lock three times before bed.

3. Let the object imply the emotion

Before:

Our father abandoned us.

After:

God’s boots brooded by the door for six summers.

These boots are made for grieving.

2. Wilting With Wordiness

Most poems are wildly overwritten.

This is because you’re not drafting enough. First drafts should record seismology. Second drafts sift excess. Third drafts deliver music.

Revision is removal, and removal is submission approval.

Decocted

The strongest word(s) in a lyrical phrase need space.

Infused

Redundancy deadens poetic charge. When modifiers accumulate around an image, they disperse pressure where it needs to be intensified. Strong poems achieve density through precision. Precision is the opposite of abundance.

One exact noun outweighs three odious adjectives. (For the record, I abhor adjectives.)

Famous Example

From Ariel:

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right

Notice the bluntness.

Plath does not write:

The strange and haunting moon is like a pale, mysterious face

She trusts the noun.

Clinical Manifestations

unnecessary adjectives
redundant body references (“on my tongue,” “in my ears”)
filler transitions
explanatory clauses
“very,” “really,” “somewhat”

The Remedy

1. Remove an adjective (or two) from every line

Before:

the cold gray miserable rain

After:

the gray rain

2. Compress syntax

Before:

He walked slowly across the empty parking lot at night.

After:

He crossed the empty parking lot at night.

3. Trust the image to convince the senses

Before:

blood tasting metallic like rust

After:

blood tasting like rust

The tongue knows rust is metallic.

3. Mistaking Abstraction for Depth

Fledgling poets especially believe musing creates philosophical seriousness. Many fear stillness. Their speaker keeps talking past the moment of resonance.

Decocted

Specific things are profound. Abstract concepts are not.

Infused

Your reader experiences reality concretely before conceptualizing it. Poetry that begins at the conceptual level bypasses embodiment and therefore bypasses emotional participation. Readers cannot inhabit abstractions.

Nobody has ever physically touched “despair.”

But everyone knows the sound of ice cracking in a sink.

Famous Example

From North:

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Heaney does not begin with:

I feel conflicted about artistic inheritance.

He gives us the pen.

The body arrives first. Meaning follows.

Clinical Manifestations

“truth”
“memory”
“existence”
“humanity”
“the soul”
“time”
“trauma”

These require grounding.

The Remedy

1. Replace concepts with objects

Before:

grief consumed the house

After:

sympathy cards whitewashed the grand piano

2. Anchor philosophy in sensory detail

Before:

mortality terrified me

After:

grandpa folded the whites before his ambulance arrived

3. Make the body present

Anatomy reifies abstraction.

Most lyrical revision removes interference.

It reveals the poem that was mud-spattered in excess language, cake-battered in explanatory scaffolding, tonal drift, and skepticism.

These recurring weaknesses often come from admirable instincts:

the desire to be understood
the desire to sound intelligent
the desire to ensure emotional clarity
the desire to leave the reader with certainty

But poems are not judged in a court of law.

The best ones do not announce themselves as profound. Rather, they place the correct words beside each other so precisely that there truly is no other way to say what they say. So that a reader’s nervous system senses truth before recognizing it.

And almost always, the revision that transforms the poem is smaller than the poet expects.

A scythe.

An image affirmed.

An adjective eradicated.

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Clarity Cut Collection II: The Unfixed I

JC — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 11:09:48 GMT

Preface

There are many ways to write a poem. It is a much greater challenge to write oneself out of one.

What follows is a series of relinquishments. Again and again, the poet steps aside; sometimes willingly, sometimes under pressure, and allows another consciousness to take shape on the page. Where language is asked to carry a mind it was not built to contain.

Persona, at its highest register, is an encounter with the limits of the self. To write this way is to risk disorientation, to relinquish certainty, to let a poem carry a life it does not fully understand. And yet, it is through that very act that something elemental is discovered: the extent to which identity is constructed, and at times, dismantled.

Voices emerge that are incorporeal, embodied, historical, speculative, intimate, estranged. They do not ask to be believed so much as harkened. And in entering them, even briefly, we are asked to reconsider the boundaries we assume are real. Partitions between self and other, speaker and subject, poet and spirit.

If there is a unifying gesture here, it is this: a willingness to cross over, and to remain “other” long enough for something to change in us all.

One final note, by way of orientation.

This collection does not emerge from the practiced systems of a literary journal, nor has it passed through the multiple hands such institutions afford. It has been gathered, arranged, and prepared with care, but also within the limits of a singular editorial vantage.

Inevitably, imperfections persist. Should you encounter any errors of formatting, transcription, or presentation, I invite you to bring them to my attention so that the record may be made faithful.

More importantly, I want to thank you. To submit a poem (especially one that asks you to step outside yourself) is no small feat. It requires a willingness to risk misalignment and to let the work change you as you arrange it. I hope this exercise has widened your range through your assumed voice. But more importantly, uncovered new capacities within the voice you call your own.

I. ingress

golden girl

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in an afternoon to myself,

i watch the fiery red lilies

sway uncertainly—

following a breeze

which disrupts itself, mid-gust.

and all my life—haven’t I been just like a lily?

sat on my swing now,

wondering, humorously,

if i’ll be able to get up.

∙✼∙

in the span of a day,

the morning glories open with the sun,

and i hope my kids will call

before they close.

damn it,

i didn’t want to be that mom—

like mine; worried she was a burden.

but they have my great-grandkid’s

soccer games;

and i can’t go to those

anymore.

∙✼∙

in the span of a week, i may reflect

a bit more than i should—

and stare at my hands more than

i ever did

in years past.

gold rings, which have left permanent marks—

may, someday soon,

belong to my daughter’s jewelry box.

still, i sit outside with friends

and we bullshit about whatever.

and for the past two weeks,

i’ve been watching the doves nest;

they’ve gone from twigs to eggs—

now i’m eagerly awaiting their chicks to hatch.

∙✼∙

this past year felt like four months.

and the past six years, since my husband passed,

felt like ten years—

and also like

two months;

simultaneously, somehow.

and i have been a lily,

blowing around in all different directions,

having not really moved;

same as i remember feeling when i was thirty,

but different now.

∙✼∙

the doves are in their nests for the night—

the lilies are still, and the glories

will be back in the morning.

my world has been

everything i thought it would be,

everything i’d expected—

so, i’ve bravely embraced the changes.

and if i don’t get to see the chicks hatch,

I will only miss

one moment of joy,

which i know isn’t really about the chicks,

but more a celebration

of life lived.

Slowly Disappearing

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I sit and hold his hand,
this man I've known for all these years,
who raised and taught and nurtured me,
who took away my fears.

Yet something's taken part of him,
he doesn't know me now.
When I speak to him of my childhood
he just furrows his brow.

Until recently, there would be times,
when he seemed just as of old.
We would speak of films and football,
he'd recall the tales I told.

The last few weeks, though, have been hard,
he just can't remember me.
I talk of Mum, of both his grandkids,
but he's in nineteen sixty-three.

I hear tales of long-dead relatives,
as though he's just met them for a drink,
but if I ask him what he's done today,
he'll just sit and stare, and blink.

No more hands upon the shoulder
no more 'how's it going son?'
He stares through me,  with glassy-eyes,
talks of races long since run.

The affliction slowly eating up
his memories and mind,
the most recent ones devoured,
the past won't be far behind.

Soon before the end comes,
and it's what makes me most sad,
there will sit a husk, a shell
of what was once my Dad.

ice & snow

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The ice glistens,
As it clings to the trees;
The chimes hang silently,
There is no breeze.

A dusting of snow,
Lies on the ground;
Flashing with ice,
Like a jewel in a crown.

The fog plumes,
As I exhale;
As I slowly walk,
Along the trail.

The rising sun,
Will soon melt the snow;
An ever changing,
Winter wonderland show.

The curtain is rising,
On a brand new day;
And yesterday’s snowflakes,
Will slowly fade away.

©️Paradoxical Phoenix

#paradoxicalphoenixignite

11 January 2025

Curlew (Above the Clouds)

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I circle you
without lyrics
or intention.

The sidewalk ripples—
you’ve been stepping over cracks
long before I started watching.

They say my voice means endings—
that when I call I collect,
feeding off unwished coins.

I call today for another reason—
to mark where you are,
to remind you that staying counts.

I see you move
through relentless rituals—
medicine measured,
breath observed,
time negotiated
one minute at a time.

The red-curled boy
with the marked spirit
leans into his wheelchair.

You grip the handles,
steady as the horizon
I use to keep my balance.

When ghosts gather—
the lives you thought he’d lead,
I stay aloft.

Don’t look up for permission.
Keep your eyes on him.
Let the ground rise.

I circle you
until the air catches wind
of your listening.

The sound I leave behind
is not a warning
but a hand at your back.

Our duet lingers,
barely,
above the clouds.

II. residue

Standing At The Bar

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A Response to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar”
Written as in the voice of Emily Sellwood Tennyson

When you had crossed the bar, my love, 
The tide moved out with you. 
I stood where sand met darkened sea 
Beneath an evening's hue.

But not undone. The sea returned, 
As seas have always done. 
It washed the shore where I still stood 
Beneath the setting sun.

For forty years I kept your fire, 
I wrote the words you spoke. 
I answered what the world demanded 
While you bore the poet's yoke.

I do not know what waits beyond 
The sandbar and the foam. 
But I have learned what water knows: 
It always finds its home.

The pilot knows the crossing, love. 
I trust he knows the shore. 
Until my own tide carries me 
I'll listen for the roar.

Joan D’Arc

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Early smell
of petrichor
a good morning
to die
 
Apres moi, le deluge
 
Flames lick
in bites
 
the pyre
take my ashes
spread me wide
across God’s
forsaken land
 
fire tinged
tunnel vision
the cross
beckons me
 
I mutter
a humble prayer
my vision
clouds
to smoke
 
l’ange tend la main

Hadley Richardson

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So many sides to him
he defied geometry.*

I liked that he fell in love —
but he always had the next one
before he left the previous.

Lost the best part of him
trying to impress an audience;
it obscured the man.*

Flannel shirts —
a strangely beautiful thing,
and they smell so good.

Besides, some day,
if I don’t watch out,
there’ll be a poem out there
about me.

Oh, how exciting you are.

People ask:
why do you live alone?

It’s as if he’s on the moon.

And —
is it pleasant to hunt something
you want very much
over a long period of time?*

Oh, how exciting you are.

Homesick for what we had.

His silence
was so well placed
to end a dream.*
But what about
the mess it leaves?

I don’t need marriage —
I’d rather all this sin.

No feeble marks on paper.
You’re free.

You’re leaving.

*Lines marked with an asterisk are quoted 
or adapted from the writings of Hadley 
Richardson or Ernest Hemingway

III. riptide

Just Cold Waitin’

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Woke up with blue toes and red rage from yesteryears cage, collapsin. I was 
somebody once: A clown. When it all came down, crashin. No more laughin; 
yet, no cryin... 'cause I still got some dignity.

Just cold waitin'

The asphalt's where I lean, and I pray, until the dopeman comes to surrender 
the fiend in my way. The demon in my soul who needs to be fed. Started as a 
slow drip. But, now I got the control 'cause I'm not in that bed. Quick shot; 
pure bred. I get the best shit, from a good spot, northend of the bricks. Not 
down on skidrow like the rest of the kids... 'cause I still got some dignity.

Just cold waitin'

Until I march up, straight to source, no mark up. I bring a spliff to spark up, and 
I got some fresh nikes to enlighten the dark up. Haven't showered in weeks, 
but I got the magic sneaks when I park up... 'cause I still got some dignity.

Just cold waitin'

All the fools in the southend treat me like a king, when I come down glowin. 
Golden brown in my wings, and my body straight floatin. That boy Preston 
said "man, your shit's always the most potent". I put my chin up to say... "that's 
'cause I still got some dignity".

Just cold waitin'

Then I wake up with blue toes and red rage from yesteryear's cage, collapsin. 
My pops was a suit and tie; mom was a textile worker in a factory. I was a star 
player; my nickname was "The Battery". Until I tore my ACL. Now, I'm just 
runnin back and forth raisin hell like an opioid athlete. Chasin the dragon... 
wonderin if I still got some dignity.

Just cold waitin'

The Jile

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He told of his younger days,
before the wrong time and the wrong place,
The four friends who would gad about,
Climbing trees and smoking dowts,
Listening to the Smiths and The Bunnymen,
The Doors, The Kennedys, The Mary Chain,
There was freedom the likes he'd never see again,
There was potential and expectation,
before the sadness and the medication,
He'd got a place at FSU,
for research he'd qualified, the Dux at School.
He remembers the glens, the lochs and the beers,
The nights laughing & drinking with his peers,
If he could change, he'd never have left,
And now his parents are bereft.
The cell is cold and drips with mould,
The last thing he said was,
he will never grow old.

Between the Lines

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Though she took me
Abruptly unexpectedly
 
Things are not as I feared
They would be
 
She stares at me as though
I am everything
 
She ever longed for 
She strokes my corner 
 
She strokes my corner
Again and again with her thumb
 
Damp and warm
A caress so gentle so comforting
 
I want to earn it
To be on the inside
 
Whatever it was
That drew her to hold me
 
Tucked into her chest her heart
Pounding in anticipation
 
Whatever it was
That made her believe
 
We would catch gilded sunlight
On the tips of our tongues
 
And swim in ice cold
Inky galaxies
 
At times I feel
The pressure building
 
Am I enough
Am I enough do I hold
 
The secrets the meaning
She hoped to find
 
When I made my first
Impression when her hand
 
Reached for me
But then again I see
 
She stares at me as though
I am everything

Garden Stone

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Cut flat, polished so streaks of green
are seen as table is set for tea
so on my shiny face she sat
glancing at her phone to check
the news –– the news … as if!
I was old long before politicians even began to lie
lying in my river bed unmoved by shifting currents
stoic, aloof, unflappable,
and so I will remain, 
a garden seat for tea
that she will momentarily grace
until once more another
comes to take her place.

IV. intravenous

Stop Looking at my Kandinsky

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Why must I be targeted by no-life, low-life, stalking, talking,

Kill yourself

Let them watch; you'll never find me gawking, squawking, whining, pining

I'll hurt her

How pathetic, really, that they're signing, mining, beaming, scheming

Look at that fat ass

Make me think I'm dreaming what they're scheming with their beaming, seeming...

THEY WANT YOU DEAD

V2K and psychotronic DARPA currents teeming, screaming

Strike first

Tinny voices, streams of themes that wheedle, needle, coax and hoax

You are the axle

Striking back is self-defending, lethal strokes for evil folks

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!

Got my pistol for the perps, but lashing out is what they want

Not your real family

So I live the best I can and let their ghostly asses haunt

Quick, behind you

How do they know what I'm thinking?

Shut up

Privacy endlessly shrinking

They know

They know all about me

They're coming

They're coming

Self-defense?

Self-defense?

The tokists are using the Air Loom

The tokists are using the Air Loom

Shadow Crossing

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Scavenger:
I only
hunt in the morning 
when the sun rises 
before anyone wakes
to see me
I am a lone wolf and only 
howl at the moon at night

chase me, catch me if you can 
I will always get away
I sneak away before 
you even notice
I'm gone
quiet as a mouse

a venomous snake 
that bites with no remorse
I slither up your sleeve 
and catch you by surprise 
startle you awake to see 
if I left a mark
and it bled inside you

you screamed, but I closed 
my eyes and shut my ears 
I didn't want to know what 
I had left behind

I was Legendary (Pals for Life)

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stack on stack on stacks
no tall cash
just immortality, buckets full
bucket empty, searching for sanity
break neck speed toward fandom
i turned myself into a meme
baptized into an internet wet dream
punch drunk, i knuckled up
i turned myself inside out
burnt out, sideways i drifted
—
i peaked with Pals for Life
thought it was thug life
two decades stacked since my infamous war cry
Say it, i can’t
Say it, I buried it
recessed in the back of my mind
—
i faltered, i idled, then i prematurely ejaculated
i fucked it, the planning, i smoked it
the raid, i stormed it, i shat the bed
burned it all down, ground on down
to go it alone was not in the cards
i’m tucked away now in a deck of cards
suburban sprawl, i was never mighty
but i’ve fallen
my better half, she scoops me up
all cards on the table, she scoops me up every time
and shuffles me back in the deck
begin again.

Win Win

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I just line them up
to watch them fall.
I didn’t take the power;
you gave it to me.
°
Obviously, God wanted this.
I wouldn’t wield this kind of power
if it wasn’t divinely ordained,
So who am I to question it?
And who are you to question me?
Did God put you up on a pedestal?
No.
Then sit the fuck down and do what I tell you!
°
You know you love it when I manipulate your moves.
You wouldn’t keep coming back
if you didn’t enjoy letting me wash your brain.
°
Taking my direction
absolves you of all responsibility.
You don’t have to blame yourself;
you’re just following orders.
°
Letting me think for you
means you never have to feel guilt,
and it means I never have to lift a finger.
Win win.

The serf

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I look but can’t read. It
jumbles in my mind, mixing and
mingling. Coagulating?
This book smells like offal—
Burn the witch! Burn the witch!

Bandits stole my shoes. Three bandits.
One for each shoe. My third shoe
was my pants.
I’m all shrivelled in this December frost—
Burn the witch! Burn the witch!

Your door’s open. I can see it,
and in, I can see in. I can smell
your cooking. A steak,
rare I hope, blue even—
Burn the witch! Burn the witch!

The loudest sound I’ve ever heard
returns. Gnawing when I think.
Background, foreground, middleground.
Brain beneath dunes and din—
Burn the witch! Burn the witch!

My chickens are all headless
and they run around. They infuriate me.
My wife’s headless too, my kids legless,
but I’m heartless and warmthless—
Burn the witch! Burn the witch! Burn her!

V. alterity

Inventory Tag Missing

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They did not understand me,
so they arranged me.

That is how you solve a thing you cannot enter.

Glass first.
Then distance.
Then a sentence small enough to stand between us.

You read it.

You trust it more than the feeling
you will not follow.

Material: stone.

That part is correct.

Everything else is negotiation.

You like to believe function leaves a trace.
That if you wait long enough
meaning will return to the surface.

It will not return.

It did not belong to me.

I did not belong to it either.

(That is not how you think about objects.)

Once, I was used.

I remember the weight of hands
or something like hands…
or the pressure of being placed where something aligned.

No.

Not placed.

Entered.

No.

That is not the word.

You see the problem.

You want verbs that behave.

I do not have them anymore.

So I say used.

Because it is small enough for you.

Now I am held in a light
that does not ask anything of me.

You circle.

You look for an intention
as if it had hardened inside me.

It did not.

It passed.

Through me.

Around me.

Or I was part of it.

(This is where I become unclear.)

You prefer me when I am unclear.

You call it mystery.

It is not mystery.

It is loss without witnesses.

Sometimes one of you pauses.

Not long.
Just incorrectly.

You stop reading.

And something almost happens.

Not understanding.

Something closer to displacement.

As if you were briefly not where you usually are
when you look at things.

That is the nearest you can come.

Then the label restores you.

Ritual.
Symbolic.
Unknown.

Perhaps.

Always perhaps.

You think I am what remains.

That is convenient.

It allows you to stand here
without asking what you are
in relation to what I was.

I am not what remains.

I am what you cannot enter anymore.

And what you cannot enter,
you learn to name
until it stops resisting you.

The Verb They Never Hear

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I learned early:
seeing is not the same as being believed.

When I speak, it is already too late.
Not for me,
for what I am pointing at.

They teach me names in the palace air.
I return them altered.
I was given sight
before language agreed to hold it

like a lamp in a room
no one consents to call dark.

Not vision.
A pre-splitting.
A tremor in meaning
before things decide to mean themselves.

They called it gift:
this tightening of air before truth arrives,
this clarity that makes speech feel staged,
arriving always after the moment it was meant to alter.

I say: the stones will loosen in the walls.
They hear: stone. wall. permanence.
They do not hear the verb.
They never hear the verb.

There is a particular loneliness
in being correct too early.
It is not vindication.
It is delay stretched into identity.

Sometimes I think language is a corridor
built after the fire,
so no one has to remember heat
as anything but story.

I try again.

I say: the sea is already inside the gates.
They laugh
because water obeys boundaries
in the grammar they prefer.

But I have seen water practice patience.
I have seen it learn doors.

There is always a moment,
just before dismissal
when it lands.

Not belief.
Recognition without permission.

Then they cover it:
with reason, with ritual, with tomorrow.

They ask me to soften my voice
so as not to disturb the architecture.

But prophecy is not volume.
It is pressure;
the way stone remembers
it was once fluid.

They say I am cursed.

But what is a curse
if not perception without shelter?

I begin to wonder
whether I am warning them
or completing a pattern,
a structure that requires someone
to be unheard
for the world to keep its shape.

Still, I speak.

Not because I am heard,
but because silence
would be a second collapse,
and I have already lived inside the first.

And this is the fracture I cannot unsee:

what is inevitable
arrives dressed as surprise.

So I remain
in the long interval
between knowing
and being allowed to know,

a mouth still warm with futures
no one has agreed
to survive.

VI. paroxysm

The Translation of the Ghost

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This bed is a printing press, 
and his hands are heavy with 
the ink of a woman who died in a different font. 
He traces the 
copy 
     of a copy 
          of a copy 
               of 
          my 
     hip, 
searching for the original die, 
the signature she left in the mattress. 

I am the carbon paper, 
transferring the heat of a precedent 
onto the cold skin of a man 
who cannot read my name without a dictionary.

He moves inside me 
like a man 
walking 
through 
a house—
he used to own, 
fingering the wallpaper, 
checking the grout for the residue of her sweat.
 
His weight a census:
counting the ribs she left behind, 
pushing his tongue 
into my mouth
to find the echo 
of a voice that broke
in a 
full stop.
 
Even now, 
his eyes are scanned—drifting, 
looking past my labor for a newer draft, 
a fresh page without the watermark of a grave.

At this desk, 
my fingers become 
the machinery. 
I type the letters of her name 
until my nails are stained with the carbon
of his memories.
Organizing his myths, 
filing the grief 
into neat, 
alphabetical 
rows. 

I carry the children of 
the Apparition 
like inherited furniture.
There is my own—
small, 
soft proof 
of my own blood—
               a single, 
               living stanza 
I am trying to keep 
from being 
edited 
edited
out 
out.

I retreat to the hallway mirror, 
but the silvering is peeling back 
like a scab. 
The glass, a faulty machine. 
It does not return my gaze; 
it archives it. 

I look for the Assia-spec
high-gloss nylon 
German-perfume 
trade-fair
brand-label version 
with wipe-clean 
eyes
but the 
reflection  noitcelfer
is a blind glare, 
an empty plate. 

                  Behind me, 
The Ghost 
is not standing.
She is wearing 
                  my back, 
forcing the frame 
until it fits 
the stone 
of her 
bust.

The Room 
watches
               from 
               the end 
               of the 
               hall
a heavy
breathing 
fourth 
body. 

Its pilot light is a cobalt pupil 
               tracking 
          my march
unblinking
     clinical 
          hungry 
               for the 
                    bone. 

The formica table is a cold ledger 
waiting for the final inventory. 

The air 
is 
not 
air.
It’s a composition 
a parts-per-million countdown 
of the space 
I 
am 
no 
longer 
allowed 
to occupy.

I begin the manual of the end. 
No elemental soaring. No poetic grace. 
Just the snap of tape.
The walls begin to filter my screams, 
stripping the consonants until I sound like a 
translation 
of a translation.

The sapphire teeth of the burner chatter. 
The copy of a copy of a copy 
hits the original source. 
          Gloss 
melts into the floor. 
          Fabric 
       dissolves 
         into the 
          center. 

The sharp ringing begins: 
piercing feedback hijacking the air. 
Not my voice. It is the bell. It is the hook. 
It is calcium. 

The script is finished. 
The Kitchen closes its eye. 

RING-IN. 

RING-OUT.

After Assia Wevill

On March 23, 1969, Assia Wevill—a linguist and advertising copywriter—committed suicide in her London flat. In a death that duplicated the method used by Sylvia Plath six years prior, she moved a mattress into the kitchen, sealed the room with tape, and turned on the gas. She also took the life of her four-year-old daughter, Shura.

Assia first entered the lives of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath in 1962, when she and her husband, David Wevill, visited the couple at Court Green. An affair between Assia and Hughes began immediately, making her a co-conspirator in the fracturing of the original household. After Plath’s death in 1963, Assia assumed the role of maintaining Hughes’ home and raising Plath’s two children, Frieda and Nicholas. During this time, she operated as Hughes’ editor and translator, meticulously typing the manuscripts that would secure the literary immortality of the woman she had replaced.

Despite her domestic and professional labor, Hughes’ infidelities were relentless. While historical accounts often focus on Assia as a victim of despair, her decision to mirror Plath’s suicide, to me, suggests a forced symmetry. In this view, Assia is not merely a bystander to her own demise, but a presence caught in a trap of her own making. It was an act of total consumption—the Ghost of Sylvia inhabiting Assia’s hands and guiding them through the domestic ritual until the copy perfectly matched the original source.

Therein lies my translation.

VII. vicissitude

Love Poem

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your copy of this poem is different
I couldn’t trust the real one to anyone else
I gave the others a poem about love, 
to confuse them
we don’t have much time
I need you to infiltrate
these lines with me, by 
listening very carefully, by 
refusing to make up your mind 
until the end. don’t skip to the end 
either, or it won’t work
this message
and our chances, will self-destruct
you must trust the last line 
to appear, as it has so 
many times, like the right device 
(or in your case double 0 the right 
person) designed to spring you 
from your own clumsy chaos 
a misguided instrument
in that it is content 
with being used only once

Old Mill

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I have known people, great hordes of people,
People vast and numerous as the hills’ bones
Sweating and swearing about my wheels,
Keeping in motion the huge millstones.
But long ago they stopped. All is quiet
In the forest where my gears fuse with earth.
My walls are moss and fern. One small riot,
The stream that cuts me through with bubbling mirth.
Birds nest here, undisturbed by human sounds—
Except sometimes the hikers come to view me.
Inside my roofless house they creep around
And show some reverence for the rooms of trees.
I love to watch them, though they mar the green;
Their bodies, sleek and finite like machines.

Everything I Could Not Say

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I live in white

skin
not mask

a silent canvas of porcelain
erasing everything

my mouth
my eyes

two open windows
without shutters

Silence presses in

I feel you there
And I smile

I draw it slow
like ink blooming in water

My cheeks rise pretending
the cue was always mine

I open invisible windows 
with slow large hands

pull brightness thin between my fingers
until it disappears

You laugh
I bow 

low 
like sound itself becoming
an arc well rehearsed

But laughter holds a seam

Watch me unzip it

Invisible rain collects
in my cupped hands 

I let it fall

up my sleeves

then down
down
down

My eyes learn gravity
the way sorrow sits
settling

into a wall built in thin air

I press against it

feel the give
that never gives

A door opens to nowhere

I fold myself into a box
and hear someone shout
it’s safe there

Inside

my smile flickers
like a wick without oil

I split my face

one crescent morning
one bruised evening

Two halves that argue 
in a language of slow blinking

Up

I am a feather
light with secrets

My spine lengthens
then curves into a question mark

Fingers chase birds
only I can see

Down

I am prayer taught to kneel

My shoulders still feel every hand
that placed weight there
and called it love

I climb an invisible ladder

each rung a promise
breaking

I fall

catch
fall

catch
until falling is the only truth
that speaks without sound

Still

I offer you a rose
red as a blush
growing from nothing

petal by patient petal
soft as a practiced touch

I hold it between us
like an agreement drawn in air

that silence carries weight
that feeling has edges
that a face can hold a story
and a room many storms

I bow

But it’s not the end
only me folding

becoming small enough to tuck away

the highs into one sleeve
the lows into the other

I walk off
both hands full

of everything I felt
but couldn’t say

My eyes
still speak as I disappear

But you must hear
without your ears

Metamorph

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new skin - i feel it burning
inside - to boil up now - splitting
open the future -

the acid of change - the agony
of transformation - dissolving
what once was - i put myself here -
i built this place out of me -

i feel the bones
soggy like rotten logs -
i feel them sinking -

but still i am here in the breath -
all this once dormant - years ago -
i caught only hints - flares in the chest -
i was producing my tomb -

what will remain when the rest dissolves -
fading shadows - what of them -
i emerge from the past pale and shaking -
fragile wings unfurling -

this beauty was built on pain -
memory is dead - only i remain

VIII. remains

95 Theses

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If you’re having word problems, 
I feel bad for you son.
I got 95 theses, but my faith ain’t one.
   
I’ve got the Gutenberg to run my new patrol.
Charles wants to make sure that my mouth stays closed.
Church’s critic, saying they’re Money, cash, soul.
I’m from the Priesthood, padre! What kinda facts are those?
Fleecing fams with holes in their zapatos.
Say you can celebrate in heaven if you got the dough.
   
Outspoken critic; read the whole list through.
Don't like my lyrics? You can press fast forward. 
Street smarts with Marty—words disrupt their show.
Played down as verbiage. Got self-published hits—so!
   
King mad. Try t’say I’m Black Mass, 
so Wittenberg can give ‘em more cash for ab–solution.
I don’t know for what you take me as,
or if you get the message Lil’ Marty has.
I’m faith and good works, Bishops. I ain’t dumb.
I got ninety-five theses, but my faith ain’t one; 
hit me.
   
95 theses but my faith ain’t one.
If you’re having word problems. 
I feel bad for you son.
I’ve got 95 theses, but my faith ain’t one.
   
Thesis 84, and my throat is getting raw.
In my purview, Pope is circumventing purgatory law.
Got two choices y’all, hand over the cash or, hmmm,
pounce on that devil, nail the paper to the door.
   
I ain’t trying to see it rise for Reformation’s sake.
I got a few issues, let me plead my case.
As I pull the hammer from the side of my robe,
I hear, 
   
Son, let me know what you’re arguing for.
   
‘Cause I’m sick of extortion when the coffers getting low.
This acting like a bottom feeder sure has got to go.
Are you here to protest or cough up your dough?
   
Say, you were writing 95 to liberate the poor? 
   
uh-huh
   
By the Church’s designation you stepped a little too far,
carrying words just like weapons from the Morning Star.
   
I ain’t recanting none of it. All my parchment’s legit.
   
Well, do you mind if we see what the King says about it?
   
My intentions are locked. So, there’s no turning back.
I’m dispensing the fight. Set your watch and warrant to that.
   
Don’t you hammer that tack. 
You gonna need a lawyer or something?
Someone to undo this dumb thing?
   
I studied at the bar, and I know a little bit,
enough that you won’t convince me to recant it.
   
We’ll see how you feel when the cage time comes.
   
I got 95 theses, but my faith ain’t one.
   
95 theses, but my faith ain’t one.
If you’re having word problems, 
I feel bad for you, son.
I’ve got 95 theses, but my faith ain’t one.

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Submission Updates

JC — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 10:47:39 GMT

First, thanks to everyone who’s submitted to the Clarity Cut Persona Poem Contest so far. With ten days remaining, we’re already approaching twenty entries, and the range of interpretations has been dope to see.

If you’ve already submitted and happen to see this post, I’d love to get written consent to include your piece in the contest compilation post. If not, I will track you down individually.

Reminder: Deadline is April 24. Submissions are open via Substack post or DM. $75 cash prize.

To assist writers still shaping their entries, I’m sharing an example of a persona poem from my archives.

This piece was written in 2014, before the recent cultural wave of Latter-day Saint narratives in mainstream media—works such as The Book of Mormon and other contemporary portrayals of insular religious life.

Still, it inhabits a similar emotional terrain: faith under pressure. Desire constrained by doctrine. And identity tethered to a closed moral system.

More importantly, it demonstrates what this contest is asking for. I am neither Mormon, part of the world this poem inhabits, nor do I share the speaker’s desires. But as a poet, I allow the voice to enter that interior world fully. To let it alter my syntax, my moral compass, even my emotional logic. That is the work of persona.

Don’t spend your time pretending to be someone else; use your language to become someone else temporarily.

Once again, Substack is punishing my propensity for long lines. This piece is best experienced on desktop, where it can stretch wide, as intended.

A Later Day

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You trace my navel rim in that empyrean way. I ask God— 
        or Moroni—did Joseph Smith not finger the Golden Plates that same way?

The same pleasing, tingling sense of being, belonging, then seeing:
	the stone—Smith’s guide, and mine—your eyes, the quiver of your thigh,

the resulting rise I grasp as Smith’s scribe once held his quill.
	The vivacity in an instrument charged with charting a religion

is enough to make me rigid, and as we sit—your hand 
	on mine, my hand on yours—I try not to think of my wives. Today, Ruth

baked a rhubarb pie; Sariah tilled nine to five. At 5:16—the time
        they say Smith died—I saw you outside and thought back to the first

time we lay together, barely sixteen, shuddering like lungs
	undone by jumbled lust and fear. The Lion of the Lord roared,

a reminder of His sacrifice, His exodus, our home—His Deseret.
	And now, undressed, erect, in your bed, Father Levi’s sermon circles

my head: As you act on your desire to believe, God will 
        strengthen your belief in Him until it becomes sure knowledge. 

So I never asked God for an explanation; it must have felt
	like vindication when my sister was stilled among us Saints. 

It was you who found her, on your way to a Chekhov play—
        The Cherry Orchard, maybe—stumbled upon her frozen corpse. 

The man in black she refused to court, eyes me in church—
	I dread that look; in it, I see that God’s justice has run its course.

But, I forget when your lips press my collar, like dew on thyme.
	I’ll assess my crimes. I have never drunk, no tattoos, in the community

I am believed to be a pious Saint—unlike her, I remain.
	But now, as our flanks sway, I remember why God has given

me eyes—Smith’s vision, a calling I dare not name. I sigh, my faith 
        a façade, a disguise: a covenant between what is right and what is chaste.

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The Clarity Cut: Persona Poem Challenge

JC — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 10:31:43 GMT

I’m beyond excited to introduce the second Clarity Cut poetry contest (on the first day of National Poetry Month, no less).

The aim remains the same: to sustain your practice, encourage experimentation with unfamiliar techniques, and push your writing beyond its habitual limits. Each quarter, I’ll be offering a new prompt.

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Congratulations to who was the winner of last quarter’s Ekphrastic Challenge.

For this contest, the focus is persona.

A persona poem adopts a voice that is not the poet’s own. It is an act of imaginative embodiment — a temporary inhabiting of another consciousness, historical figure, mythic presence, or invented speaker. At its strongest, the persona poem reveals its subject from the inside out: shaping diction, cadence, worldview, and emotional logic in ways that diverge meaningfully from the poet’s lived self.

A great persona poem balances empathy with distance; it discovers tension between what the speaker can say and what they cannot bear to name. I’m looking for pieces that demonstrate formal intelligence, sonic palette, and figurative pressure. All while allowing the assumed voice to destabilize your own poetic tendencies (I read a lot on here, I know how you write 😉).

Your prompt

Write a persona poem that fully inhabits its speaker. Let the voice transform your language. Use the vantage point to unsettle your assumptions. Embrace the imaginative shift enough to teach you something about your own poetic range.

Guidelines

One submission per poet (via Substack post or DM)
Submissions close Friday, April 24
Winner announced Friday, May 1

On AI-assisted works:

1.) In short, yes, I will accept AI-assisted pieces.

2.) If a poet has used such tools extensively in the drafting or revision process, I trust they’ll say so.

3.) I have a keen nose for slipshod, unmilled, or crude AI lyric. I also firmly believe that the top 20% of Substack poets outwrite AI in their most mundane dreams.

Prize

The winner will receive a $75 cash prize
(sent via Venmo or PayPal )

Examples of extraordinary contemporary persona poems

Patricia Smith, Skinhead
Louise Glück, Gretel in Darkness
Tyehimba Jess, selections from Olio
Victoria Chang, Obit
Natasha Trethewey, Native Guard

I’m very much looking forward to seeing your work.

-JC

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Subnotae, Vol. II

JC — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 10:48:38 GMT

Some poems are meant to inhabit the edges. The outer rims of attention and thought.

Subnotae collects these liminal minims, releasing them into the space they were always meant to occupy. Most were prompted by the words, images, and sharings of my Substackian brethren.

See Subnotae, Vol. I

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Impromp(two)

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(pattern)al

phyllotaxis
sunflower capitula

137.5°
Fibonacci hasp

filial piety like rebar—
invisible, load-
bearing

Penrose tiling—
kite, dart,
locus

torque-wrench
honesty
spirit vial, level

if–then scaffolding
premises, phenetic

villanelle scheme,
repeated dream

decision tree
pruned
as sapling

Sashiko stitching
buttercream thread
indigo cloth

straightedge habit—
no freehand belief

faithless in weather,
chance,
variable faith

patterned defense;
temper set to cast
iron

02.09.26

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Burnished Copper Bell Pull

We suspect our houses method-act us:
parlors practicing posture,
escritoires rehearsing hesitation,
bell pulls reinventing reach.

If we’re only the airflow—
if hinges open vocal bands 
through us,

the slips, the tells, 
the katzenjammer
were never ours.

They belong to copper and palladium,
Purpleheart and Wenge,
fallible in fibre,
alive long before
we arrive.

02.10.26

Lyrical Prompts

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I don’t need healing
I need ether—
amygdala
  smoothed
      enough
that nociceptors forget
           phonetics.

02.19.26

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      Affirm me
the way frost affirms glass—
   by forming,
   not frisking.

  Stand back,
measure distance between us—
   in angstroms
   or parsecs.

  If you mean
to anchor us use syntax—
   pray flat,
   exact.

  Say “I see you”
like a stainless sextant—
   circling cold
   bone.

02.24.26

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She recoiled from alkali
flacon gushing brine
alembic tides ablaze
in pyres dulled
by haze

DROP.

03.05.26

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like a ribbon of starlight

  caught
  on barbed wire—

  cinnamon coyote
    slinking through sage

clenching the moon in its teeth

03.05.26

Ekphrasis

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cross-section ignition
plasmatic marble
lips failing, particulate orange

dendritic schema
expansive branching 
grasping vascular intention

estrus accumulates in trunk
steady, central thickening;
xylem distended beyond neutral load

yet the figure is childish:
match-limbed, jointless,
anthropomorphic sophism

so it stands—
lignin abiding corona, 
entropy swaying to observe the outline

02.26.26

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             gravity
           annulled

      arboreal          negative

            limbs
           learning

             inversion
                by

        bifurcated
               equation

03.08.26

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Cryogenic Pastoral

Mile Marker 112
U.S. Route 6

brass sprinkler valve
 shears sometime near 2 12 am
dark aquifer speaking thirty
 degree sermersuaq arcs
  into sagebrush

where 44 year old
 male in phrygian sheepskin
cap rests
 with rope still braided
  around the trachea

capillary tubes of ice
 encasing vascular bundles
each barb
 blooming distinct
  dendritic halo P6₃

mmc symmetry
hydrogen bond cathedral
acid water
 anaerobic strata
pH 3 5
 tannins drenching
dermal collagen
 frozen in peat

bog lungs of Jutland
 folded fetal after last meal
of barley
 and flax seed porridge

near Silkeborg Denmark
 discovered 2 4oo years later on
Salt Lake Iron Age offering ground
 that once listened
  for bronze war horns across

heaths
 and ombrotrophic bogs
  where regulators fail
long enough for
 supercooled droplets
  to strike barbed steel

keratinized
 cilium muscle fiber
  preserving one final contraction
reorganizing
 under northern hydrology
until eyelids close

 dermis
  the color of steeped tea

03.15.26

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The Poet's Pace

JC — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:37:38 GMT

Spend enough time on Substack, and certain patterns emerge. Many writers are publishing constantly. Often daily. An elegy for Monday, a second on Tuesday, a short reflection by Thursday, then a villanelle over the weekend. The output begins to resemble a social media content calendar.

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The instinct makes sense. This platform rewards consistency. The small scarlet notification dewdrop becomes its own form of encouragement. Writers want to remain visible, to keep the line open with their readers.

But poetry does not benefit from that velocity.

During my freelance career, I spent several years as an artist manager and publicist for a handful of hip-hop artists. Some had modest regional success. One eventually became a global act. The music industry very clearly taught me that release strategy matters.

I’m going to keep the name to myself for now, but figured you’d want receipts

And I know many of us are here for fun, for the social elements of the platform, and because it’s freaking awesome to have readers. But if you’re going to take the work seriously, it’s worth taking the process seriously too.

The global artist I mentioned recorded far more singles than his followers ever heard. An album of his came from, on average, 62 tracks. Only a fraction were released, and they were chosen carefully—sequenced, tested, sometimes kept in the vault for years.

Not because they weren’t damn good. Or even because they didn’t fit the ambiance of the project. Most of it is simply part of the process—and understanding the value of having a creative pipeline.

That discipline used to be built into the literary ecosystem.

Poetry should operate under a similar logic. A poem might circulate privately among peers or sit patiently in a moleskin for months. Maybe it’s performed at an open mic. Eventually, it might appear in a lit mag, where it arrives with a certain sense of occasion. Or, it might sit in said poet's OneDrive until they’re feeding the worms.

What’s happening now on Substack often feels closer to mass production—volume and speed resembling the assembly line models of companies like Shein or Temu—constant output designed to keep the feed moving. And done cheaply.

Poetry is not fast fashion.

Most writers here produce far more work than they should immediately publish. But it’s not a flaw in the process; it is the process. The remedy is getting into the habit of straining your strongest work and allowing it a more deliberate path into the world.

For many poets, that still means literary magazines. It means assembling manuscripts. It means letting pieces sit long enough to tell you what they actually are.

Even if the poet isn’t fully fledged yet, these habits are essential. They create a healthy separation between writing and releasing—between creating and facing the public.

There’s also a more delicate reason for patience.

Poems often don’t fully form right away. They change in the presence of other poems. They change with life experience. A line written today might reveal its meaning only when it sits beside something written years later. Anyone who has assembled a manuscript knows the feeling: two pieces that once seemed unrelated suddenly begin speaking to each other across time.

A poem sometimes isn’t complete until it meets the one you haven’t written yet. And publishing all of your work immediately can interrupt that conversation.

None of this is an argument against platforms like Substack. If anything, they’ve opened an extraordinary space for writers. The ability to reach readers directly—without waiting months for an editorial reply—has changed the landscape in ways that are largely positive.

But abundance comes with its own pressures. When every piece appears the moment it’s written, readers are overwhelmed. There’s no anticipation left. Even the most loyal ones eventually fall behind.

No one wants literature to feel like catching up on work emails.

Write often, maybe every day if that’s your practice. Generate far more than you release. Then choose carefully which pieces deserve to leave the workshop.

Some are twice as tender when they’ve had time to slow-cook a little—
when they’ve waited long enough to discover what they’re really trying to say.

If you have questions about release strategy or the business side of literature, message me directly—I will try to respond to everyone. Advice like this is not often given freely. And it might not always be so here.

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Porchlights

JC — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 12:24:18 GMT

This post covers one of the identities I've been most reluctant to share here. I’ve put some of it on record, but this year, I’m (begrudgingly) trying to be a bit more open with you guys about who I am, and who I’ve been.

So go head, take a dusty, unreleased demo, the lyrics, and — hopefully — a few head nods. For context, this was recorded in 2014 in a walk-in closet and mixed/mastered by me, in a DAW; no fancy tools like you kids with your AI.

;)

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I’m steppin’ out my shell, call this metamorphosis
sometimes the darkest truths help define what our purpose is.
I’m floatin’ through the brine with dolphins and porpoises,
no need to read my palm just to find that I’m fortunate.

The porchlight falls dim, my foresight so grim
so I introduce the torchlight to my past sins
Just listen twice to hear my deposition,  
don’t need applause, to glean the recognition 

It’s me, myself, and I, don’t need the prepositions,  
just me, myself, and I, so heed the repetition,  
a walking contradiction in a world full of dictation
handful of shrooms and I bloom in hallucinations. 
 
Illumination, that’s what I’m about—
a room full of vagrants, but my mind's on vacation,
It's vacant, too much weight to pass the weigh station 
so I’m playing PlayStation, that alternate reality. 

Skippin’ stones on the ponds of your fallacies 
sippin’ 40s while I poke through antique galleries
my salary — can’t support the life I’m living
am I gifted? Or did I simply take what I was given?

Never take this life for granted or be branded a coward, 
take time to kiss your lover under meteor showers, 
don’t believe all that you hear cause that’s the media’s power, 
I pick and roll up the green, spark the jay like I’m Crowder. 
Spark the Jay like I’m Crowder;  
sometimes I’m just a kid tryna fill these grown trousers.

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Love on the Rocks

JC — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 10:15:36 GMT

Her life mirrored the intensity of her work.

Bohemian, openly polyamorous, and fiercely intelligent, Edna St. Vincent Millay moved through the early 20th-century literary landscape with a ferocity that scandalized and enchanted.

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She wrote openly about desire, loneliness, and the fractures of love at a time when women were expected to veil such truths. Her unvarnished intimacy — her willingness and ability to name physical longing — give her poetry its raw, enduring power.

For me, Millay was a revelation. Before her, poetry felt distant, formal, untouchable. She made it immediate.

It’s with that legacy in mind that I begin here, with her opening line:

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I know what my heart is like 
since your love died: 

a crescent of ice,
    marooned inside a glass
        of Raspberry Leroux.

Against my will
   liquor still stains,
       though no spirits left,
           sapour remains.

Opening line from Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Ebb,” Second April (1921).

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Subnotae, Vol. I

JC — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 12:21:14 GMT

This series convenes poems — first composed as Substack notes — in response to the ideas, images, and provocations circulating among the platform’s writers and visual artists.

I hope here they’ll assume a more deliberate form: fragments registering my poetic motion, perception, and dialogues of literary exchange.

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Scribbles

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           A Sub-stack 
            submerge
     sublimate  subrosa
  subjunctive  subaudible  subsist
subtilize  subfloor  submersion
  subfusc  subterranean  subdivide
     subsidiary  subtext  subroutine
        subscript  substation
           subzero

12.08.25

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overdue
overdo
  over dew

01.15.26

Haiku

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babies write haikus 
on high chairs in applesauce 
testcross Parnassus

01.08.26

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Do not fall tonight—
moth-winged vice flitting sinew,
walnut split necrose

01.13.26

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I cherish you all  
but one more haiku today  
and lobes  
     will  
          hemorrhage

01.13.26

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announcing time off 
Substack is weird. I’ll Irish
g’bye you in haiku

01.23.26

Ekphrasis

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Chill writes in sixes 
  in six steady hands
repeats decisions made at center:
 temperature, pressure, time—
  a record of air, born to collapse
   on impact.

12.08.25

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Crystallofolia 

hoarfrost sutures needles

by adhesion,
not will

rime tensile as polymers

xylem mired
sap vitrified

from dormant cambium

ochre tufts breach
crust, like papilla

12.23.25

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Solstice 
light reaches perigee of absence
photons waver, return—
an axial mercy
by fractions only patience discerns

12.22.25

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hygge 

pastel
townhome‑pupa

quadrilateral
chrysalide

gables in
kanaler double

lattice
unravel
like
polyamide

01.04.26

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ruby-throated
green comma
hovers at bleeding heart
bill to corolla,
combing nectar
anthers dusting gorget
eighty-beat seconds,
high-voltage hymnal
on the sill, a notched
mug warm enough
to still be yours

01.05.26

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Mélusine
Gadwalls quarter everted brink
culmen to culmen, tarsus to talus
Her silhouette—Salcedo’s negative space,
Vermeer’s pupil, vein-limned calyx,
Chiaroscuro framed in white

01.12.26

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Rörelse
filaments
  writhe
    in loam
fen
  sediment
fog
  fissure
flensing
  bone-dry
    husked
      dragonfly
        nymph
mist
    sieves
      sphagnum
mica-wink
         in
    pericarp
      plica
cattail
  spires
    scraping
gold-patina,
  amphibian 
mask

01.22.26

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8 phases in 8 phrases
I    Crescent         — 3° luminous, terminator acute
II   Waxing    — 23°  bulge, simulacrum compressed
III  First Quarter    — 50%, planar rive
IV   Gibbous          — 78%, convex camber
V    Full           — 100%, albedo zenith, isotropic gilt
VI   Waning Gibbous   — 82%, kinetic decay
VII  Last Quarter     — 50%, rendered hemicycle
VIII Crescent         — 7°, vestigial quantum spatter

01.16.26

Suffering

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          Both Ends 

            **BIC**
         **wick**
      **flicker**
            **flare**
               |
            forty hour
            corporate
            jargon

            iterative
            deck
            approval

            verbs
            furbished

            *flame*
            *downward*

            invoice
            inbox

            kop
            for hire
            —
            when I’m quiet
            I’m not empty
            —
            muteness
            means
            mutability

            mouthfuls
            of labor
            —
            after hours
            second wick

            covert
            combust

            pro bono
            paean

            similia
            tallow

            *flame*
            *upward*

            georgics
            smolder

            shunning
            slumber
               |
            **BIC**
         **wick**
      **flicker**
            **flare**

01.29.26

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That Drawer

JC — Wed, 21 Jan 2026 12:36:35 GMT

I spent 90 minutes on my hands and knees tidying That Drawer. You know that drawer. You have one too.

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That Drawer’s where we jam Ove Gloves with ragged thumbs. Where we slip chip clips after bestial 2 a.m. drunk munchies. That Drawer’s where takeout cutlery kits, demagnetized fridge art, scattered matchsticks, melted bottle caps, coffee-tinged decks of playing cards, assorted condiment packets, Carolina blue produce bands, childhood photos of Aunt Sophie, and malfunctioning emergency flashlights convene for the Scrapheap Accessory Olympic Games.

That Drawer is governed by no code, no mandate, or policy. It could be located anywhere in our homes. Mine, in the kitchen. Yours? The foyer, parlor, dining room, guest bath, the basement, an office — but preferably not the bedroom…

Sleeping near That Drawer can lead to disconcerting dreams.

There are no rules concerning how many drawers qualify as That Drawer in a single residence, either. If a That Drawer Census were conducted, the 132.7 million households in the United States would not necessarily correlate to an equivalent number of That Drawers.

It’s far more likely that the number of That Drawers would double, even triple our households, landing closer to the ≈343 million U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Clock estimate. Which means if you are a That Drawer in America, it’s likely, somewhere out there, you have a doppelganger.

Many households contain multiple That Drawers, but it’s as rare as hen’s teeth to find one without.

So Sunday past, I was neck deep in our That Drawer, waging war with a pugnacious band of dried black beans. Yes, the vacuum’s cleaning wand — the crevice tool — would have tipped the scales, but that felt unsporting. Instead, I used a pair of takeout chopsticks I’d banished earlier — wood frangible as toothpicks — to shimmy each pulse over a Shakira Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran ticket stub and up the sharp ridge of That Drawer, wondering who it’d been that’d spilt the beans.

Weeding That Drawer is the burden of a solitary household member. But upping the number of annual antisepses is futile — flotsam and jetsam find their way — as if That Drawer self-generates. Ask your family’s That Drawer’s steward yourself: they’re inevitably flabbergasted by the diversity of objects that amass between each cleaning. A lot of it makes sense only after you’ve held it for a moment.

Reaching for a frosted Tupperware top, I recalled That Drawers from near and distant past. Wafts of white grape, White Owl guts, and white widow crumbs in Tallahassee’s. Unpaid parking violations, polyethylene pouch hand warmers, that vintage sterling silver money clip in Whitney Street’s. Ma’s bathroom drawer in my childhood home, flush with mummified sand dollars, sea biscuits, mermaid pouches; a conch shell, a mason jar of sea glass — I remembered meaning to tell her we should name it the Tidal Case, a contrivance swept away in undertows of memory.

I pinched the final black bean between my thumb and forefinger as my wife emerged from the bedroom, and somehow resisted the impetuous urge to flick the bean.

That Drawer’s biosphere was collapsing, its substratum nearly visible.

I was a writer the last time I cleaned That Drawer (I first classified myself as a writer at age 11). I emptied my first drawer at 19. So I’ve been a writer every time I’ve scoured That Drawer. And yet, here I was again, knees on the floor, deciding what stayed and what didn’t.

My fingertips touched the melamine back of That Drawer — it came at a cost. I’d dragged my elbow through La Mancha Negra, an unidentified oil spill that stank of sesame oil and hot tar and clung to my arm hair like pine resin. As I excoriated my own skin with a bird’s nest of steel wool, a saffron wink caught my eye from That Drawer’s penetralia. When I registered what it was, I couldn’t subdue a sardonic smirk.

My grandfather’s self-winding Bulova wristwatch (circa 1967) with stainless steel naval dog tags looped through, our shared name: J*** C***** etched into the metal like a Lichtenberg figure.

Strange? Not really. It felt inevitable. Like I had found these artifacts many times before. Turned them over. Indexed the weight. Thought these should stay and returned them to the safest chaos I know.

That Drawer’s detritus clamored for my attention, but I ignored it. I weighed the tags, the watch in my palm — time and name united. Proof that some things don’t indicate presence until you’ve moved enough odds and sods out of the way.

I closed That Drawer.

Our arrangement is temporary.

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Clarity Cut Collection I: Turns from the Tautira

JC — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 12:37:23 GMT

Update — 6:00 PM:
I’m happy to share that Where’s Wayne has waned — let’s wax poetic. With his permission (and addition), this collection now holds fifteen works in conversation with La Farge’s painting. I’m grateful for the generosity and trust of every poet here; the fuller chorus sharpens the arc of the collection and deepens the range of seeing it contains.

Preface

I’m humbled and flummoxed by your response. ~~Fourteen poets whose work I’m proud to present~~… no fifteen, actually… ~~, if you see this, I’d love to include your lovely poem here.~~ And if I missed anyone else’s submission, I am dreadfully sorry; please harass me until you’ve made it here.

If these contests continue monthly, I fear for my own writing life; perhaps quarterly will have to do moving forward.

If you’d rather asphyxiate yourself in the Tautira than wait three months for the next one, lmk

My first published poem was an ekphrastic piece. This form’s taught me that image and poet can meet in a variety of humors; sometimes harmoniously, often in tension. And almost always with some sense of discernment.

I’m no lit mag editor. I have, however, done my best to honor each submission: formatting consistently while preserving the essence of what was sent to me. Typos were gently corrected, but nothing more, in deference to the integrity of each poet’s voice. I’m not yet that adept with the Substack editor and quite annoyed by the inconsistency of line breaks on desktop vs. mobile. Please speak up if you’d like me to adjust your work in any way.

The order, however, is purposeful. Some poets swallow the painting, letting it speak through them. Others place themselves inside the frame. Some focus on structure, some on narrative, some on reflection. Side by side, they form a spectrum, a discourse across La Farge’s vision. I’m confident this sequence allows the reader to experience the work fully, in all its varied resonance.

Congratulations to all contributors. Even without the imprimatur of official publication, seeing your poems together is no small triumph. It affirms the diversity of vision a single painting can inspire. It reminds us that poetry is, above all, a conversation between image and word, between artist and reader, and between one poet and the next. -JC

The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti. Fisherman Spearing a Fish

John La Farge, c. 1895

Currents of Being

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A movement arises,
then dissolves into itself.
Nothing owns it,
nothing directs it.
All insistence hums
without a knower.

A single line arcs—
not chosen, not willed—
a pulse through stillness,
through thought, through form.

Flickers scatter, unseen,
and recognition flickers back:
the observer and observed
are one in the field
that needs no witness.

Ripples fold into themselves,
space bending around space,
then vanish,
revealing that nothing was ever separate.

Tension and release
appear and disappear,
like names on water.
No one strikes,
no one is struck.
Only inevitability
moves without a mover,
casting no shadow but its own being.

All motion returns to the same field:
stillness moving,
time held in a single breath,
all distinctions folding
into the self
that never was divided,
that never began,
that never ends.

Clearance

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entry point aligned
timing active
sections maintenance stable
position holding
all intervals within limits

alignment in motion
maintenance section holding
timing locked
still active
intervals stable
limits ok

motion in progress
clearance not completed
intervals holding, still active
limits maintained
concurrent usage
position held

intervals narrowed
clearance minimal
position active
limit condition maintained
motion held

motion holds
clearance continues
positions maintained
limits fixed
timing locked

positions overlapping
concurrent timings
clearance unavoidable
shared intervals

entry points aligned
interval limits set
maintenance sections stable
position held
motions still active

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Editorial Note: Substack couldn't handle Sylvia's succulent form in a manner I was comfortable presenting. You deserve it like this.

The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti.

Fisherman Spearing a Fish

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Pinned against that landscape
in contemplation of the act
a statue in the water;
Olympian in fact

We are still. Waters breathe out,
the earth takes silent stock,
passions and fury can burn elsewhere.
Here movement and stillness interlock.

The Spear Fisher

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The fisherman so poised with spear in hand
spends everyday in the rivers clear water
his catch piled high upon the wet sand
he could eat for a month, why the slaughter?

They say years ago he sailed the open sea
where the fish were big and he a success
then he spied a fish massive and mighty
a golden marlin, stolen in trespass

And awoke the sea dragon, king of storms,
in fury he sent forth thunder and squall
that fisherman’s love they tore from his arms
appeasingly sent to the  dragon’s thrall

Now he practices spearing fish whose size
most closely matches the dragon’s eyes

Harpoon

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Regard the cathedral, 
a painted tapestry
He stands alone
in the shadow 
of the valley 

Papillary ridges 
clutch notched grooves 
of antediluvian wood 
worn smooth by grips
of father’s fathers 

A spear infused with
oil and memory
a paleolithic technique 
honed in the mountain’s
benevolent cradle 

The burden flows to him

Making peace with 
the steward’s exchange:
to sustain life  
he must take life 
that primordial bargain

A deciphering eye
discerns dancing light
with the undulation
flitting underneath
a spasmodic waltz 

The breaking of glass
His aim holds true 
the waters provide 
a fleeting flirtation
with abundance

The blessing flows to him

An Ekphrastic Poem
Inspired by
The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti: Fisherman Spearing a Fish
by John La Farge, c. 1895

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You always romanced the murky colored waters
Where weird little bugs reside
And while you avoided depth
She was dancing into the sea like a child
The others stared as you slipped away
She danced closer and closer

While you eyed your next catch and
She couldn’t see beneath your surface
As much as she tried to reach you
The distance grew between your hearts.`
She felt the water washing over her ankles

And her hands touching the surface of the waves
You were her anchor, keeping her down
She was your diversion, or was she
Your tormented self in custody.
While she traversed the open waves in curiosity

You dug your heels in even deeper
Holding tight to your spear, as if
It could protect you from her sight
As she disappeared from your view.

Open

Ekphrastic based on The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti. Fisherman Spearing a Fish by John La Farge

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Open up, river.
Open up, skies.
You know me not,
I am a child of the red clay earth,
My body returns to it when I die
And feeds the trees and worms.
You know the worms, river.
They feed your fish.
You know the trees, sky.
They feed your clouds.
The purple mountains will shake
And fall on us together
At the end of time when the gods return.
So show me no dislike, brothers.
Give me fish for food,
Clean water for my thirst.

Above Water

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It took a lot to get here.

Not distance—

depth.

~

The kind you don’t measure in miles

but in mornings that begin

before you’re ready

and nights that refuse to end

cleanly.

~

It took a lot to get here,

to this place where my feet still touch ground

even though the water keeps rising,

cool and quiet,

pretending not to ask questions.

~

Caregiving teaches you this posture:

knees bent,

weight forward,

eyes trained on the surface

for signs of trouble

or grace

or both arriving at once.

~

I didn’t wade in bravely.

I stepped in because someone I love

was already surrounded,

because standing on shore

felt like a luxury I couldn’t afford.

~

The water presses in—

on my thighs,

my ribs,

the old confidence I used to wear

without thinking.

~

Some days it reaches my chest,

and breathing becomes

a deliberate act,

counted,

negotiated.

~

But still—

I’m upright.

~

Above water

doesn’t mean dry.

It doesn’t mean safe.

It means choosing presence

over escape,

balance over panic,

staying when every instinct says

float away.

~

There are moments

the lake goes still.

The surface turns honest,

mirroring a version of me

I barely recognize—

tired, yes,

but steady.

~

It took a lot to get here,

to learn that strength isn’t muscle

or optimism

or pretending this is easy.

~

Strength is knowing how to wade

without disappearing.

How to keep your head up

without hardening your heart.

How to remain visible

while carrying someone else’s weight.

~

I don’t walk out of the water yet.

I don’t need to.

~

For now,

being above water

is enough.

Pollen Kneaded Hand

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Poles pulled near by

Seashores

The Pollen Kneaded Hand

Seasoned the man

Sesame colored blush held by

Brush

The dye once clutched,

Released, that lure used

To draw in

By force

Of Tug

The catch(er)

Will definitely pause to look up

Fisheyed (spectator)

Standing

On edge

Wide-eyed

. . . and now

Framed

Stone(d)

My home

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My home doesn’t speak
It sings
Its mountains holds tunes of stability
Its river hums lullabies of tranquility
I wade deep
Feet then waist then chest
Ever lower but ever calmer
Never any fear
My home doesn’t harm
It caresses
Its trees hold secrets
Its leaves reveal them
I travel through
One step then another and another
Ever deeper and ever closer
Always safe
My home doesn’t flee
It loves

The Estuary

or, The Convergence

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He stands where the tide forgets its name, and dreams
are mixed with salt. The river, still unsure,
leans forward into sea the way a voice
leans toward the end of something left unsaid.
Behind him, green hills settle to their knees,
and light slides down their backs as if to rest.
No sound but where the mingled waters hush, 
a pressure, like two bodies meeting once
and knowing they will never part again.
He lifts his spear to test how silence holds,
the flash beneath it gone before it’s known,
as if the world withdrew what it revealed.
All thresholds keep a double faith, step through,
and something of the old world will not come.
The tide-brim murmurs softly, strike, or be struck,
and in that pause between, the shore remakes
its shape, the whole of time still listening.

Me, central on the strand,

Unseen, walled in behind,

The future shored, sheared,

My longing and your lats,

You vivid, me drear,

Where once we were the passionate sky,

Brushed upon a lush world, our peaks and glens.

I wonder when your piercing horizon

And my fierce needs

Broke us into that lilac liquid

And this landed stance, me

Still, faithful forever

Unfulfilled.

Keeping Afloat, An Ekphrastic Poem

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Clouds gather above me, as I close my eyes,
swallowed again by the depths of liquid,
the dangers of which I know too well.
Reason tells me to avoid it,
though I can't help wading further.

I wallow for years, in the depths.
Yellow-brown rather than green-blue
occasionally red, often bubbling.
Seeking a sustenance that's a feral yearning,
leaving my body an aching frame.

It continues on for a while, as I thrash
from underneath, forever just short of drowning.
The nectar duplicitous, as it nourishes a
need, which it has helped cultivate,
whilst burning both liver and soul.

Eventually I surface, finally learning
to enjoy the cleaner air around me
and stand only towards the edge of the water.
Occasionally I'll thrust my spear, though
now my quarry, is simply hope to remain.

An Ekphrastic Poem

The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti. Fisherman Spearing a Fish By John La Farge, c.1895.

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the river folds and bends
snaking around Mr. Mountain, his majesty of old
treescapes tickle the foothills with brilliant green
rustling winds hum down through the valley
i stand waiting and wading in water with bated breath
for my breath to be struck from me, taken
from my virgin lungs
toes caressing smooth rocks, smooth dirt
it’s not the wind as i suspected but only a pulsating pause
i glare down to see reflections of majestic, spear sharpened by fire
a Kung Fu grip i tighten
or else
an eye on a prize, i hone in
on a marbled eel, slow my breath
lock in and lock out all of yesterday
tomorrow is a week a way, my window is right here right now
goodnight marble eel, may our family now feast on the rich sweetness of your flesh
and embrace a tomorrow.

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Submissions So Far + A Small Confession

JC — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 11:57:19 GMT

Let’s start with some news, shall we?

I’m ELATED by how many poets have submitted work so far for The Ekphrastic Challenge. If you haven’t sent yours through yet, there’s still time. Submissions are open until Tuesday, January 13th.

Submit Your Poem

has had eyes on the dense (maybe overly) ambitious piece I’ve written in response to La Farge’s The Entrance to the Tautira River, which I’m fairly certain I invented a hybrid form for.

I consider that poem one I could potentially publish, so unfortunately, you won’t see it here. If you’d like to beta read (and if I trust/like you), I’m happy to share.

On that note, if you feel you’ve written something truly lit-mag-worthy, posting on Substack (or anywhere, for that matter) can count as a form of publication, which could disqualify that piece from both contests and traditional submissions. It’s good practice to write in batches, skim the top, and post the rest here. But some of you are so profuse that you should refuse that advice.

Anyway, since I can’t share my first response to La Farge, I figured I owed you this.

After working on something layered and historical, I felt like taking a different approach for the poem I’m sharing today.

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where i left it

i saw
your eyes 
linger longer

on the fish
monger

yesterday 

measuring 
much more 
than catch

today 

i speared
a mangrove 
snapper 

lopped 
its head
and laid it

in bedding
you'd washed
by the bank

white linen 
warm 
folded 

while you 
breastfeed 
the boy

i’m still
clutching 

        fin regions

        flesh open

        slime layer

	swim bladder

       paired testes

       chambered 
       heart

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The Clarity Cut: Ekphrastic Challenge

JC — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 14:13:14 GMT

I’m excited to introduce a new monthly poetry contest.

The aim here is to sustain your practice; encourage experimentation with unfamiliar techniques, and push your work beyond its habitual limits.

Each month, I’ll offer a new prompt.

For this first contest, the focus is ekphrasis.

Your prompt:

An ekphrastic poem responds to a work of visual art. Rather than explaining or summarizing the image, the poem uses it as a starting point: imagining its motion, its voices, its tension, or meaning beyond the frame. The artwork anchors the poem, but the narrative is independent of it.

Write an ekphrastic poem inspired by:

The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti. Fisherman Spearing a Fish

John La Farge, c. 1895

Guidelines

One submission per poet (submit via Substack Post or DM)
Submissions close Tuesday, January 13
Winner announced Tuesday, January 20
Contests will be monthly, announced at month’s end

Prize

Winner chooses one:

Line-level/content edit of a poem, essay, or short story
Detailed literary critique of an existing post

Send in your poem, share this challenge with fellow poets, and allow the encounter with image to take shape in your language.

Ghosts

JC — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 19:19:30 GMT

This poem is a first cousin to Sharing Initials with Jesus, born of the same creative season. To separate them for too long would feel sacrilegious. Ghosts first appeared in Inscape Literary Journal in 2016.

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Ghosts

In 1882 god died; excuse me 
God died; the same year the first 
radical mastectomy was successfully 
performed, removing both breasts 
and the death sentence from breast cancer. 
That year Ibsen’s Ghosts premiered 
in Chicago, drawing an audience’s tears. 
Ghosts of tears, of god, of men with 
breastless wives, of mutilated malignant 
breasts ping-ponged between the chests of 
Nietzsche and my great grandmother Ida; 
the only two in Aura Turner Hall that night. 
Darwin (who died that year) lodged himself in Ida’s
right breast and Dr. William Stewart Halsted
scooped out the poisoned pectoralis, axilla 
and lymph nodes, like the overripe flesh 
of a cantaloupe. Just west of Turner Hall 
the Cincinnati Red Stockings and my Chicago 
White Sox played in the first ever World Series.
Nietzsche supported the German led Reds, 
Darwin supported the fittest, and God 
was buried in a White Sox shirt alongside 
my mother, the number ten fending eyes 
from the sizeable lacuna of a left breast. 
Darwin and Nietzsche and Halsted and Ida 
and Ibsen and God and          are dead, 
but they left The sun.– The sun.*





*from the closing line of Ibsen’s Ghosts (1882)

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Disclosure

JC — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 13:26:46 GMT

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We wind the sail, wind the watch
 pronunciation pries
  at meaning

She cleaves to custom, cleaves the roast
 two to blade,
  one to duty

He held her hand and held the record
 twin keepsakes,
  but kept separate

Listen — silent! rearrange to listen
 grapheme switch
  holding hush

Bark of dog, dogwood bark
 one lexeme,
  two skins

Isis laces Osiris’s irony line by line
 stitches bind,
  mock at once

Present tense walks back to noon
 shadow reads itself
  anew

Silver stream sighs, say less
 no more,
  more or less

Language leans, leads, lifts languish
 blooming ember,
  flame to tongue

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Crafting Clarity

Reading Poetry Like a Poet, Pt. I

Establishing the Poetic Cosmos

©2026 “JC” Crafting Clarity. All rights reserved.

She works nights

©2026 Crafting Clarity. All rights reserved.

Six Years of “Timelines”

Lyrics

A quick craft note:

©2026 JC—Crafting Clarity. All rights reserved.

The Poem Has No Memory

©2026 Crafting Clarity. All rights reserved.

Subnotae, Vol. III

Lyrical Prompt

04.03.26

04.08.26

04.10.26

05.27.26

06.02.26

Ekphrasis

03.23.26

03.31.26

05.18.26

©2026 Crafting Clarity. All rights reserved.

The Tongue Knows Rust Is Metallic

1. Explicating Emotion vs. Trusting the Image

Decocted

Infused

Famous Example

Clinical Manifestations

The Remedy

2. Wilting With Wordiness

Decocted

Infused

Famous Example

Clinical Manifestations

The Remedy

3. Mistaking Abstraction for Depth

Decocted

Infused

Famous Example

Clinical Manifestations

The Remedy

Most lyrical revision removes interference.

©2026 Crafting Clarity. All rights reserved.

Clarity Cut Collection II: The Unfixed I

Preface

I. ingress

golden girl

Slowly Disappearing

ice & snow

©️Paradoxical Phoenix

#paradoxicalphoenixignite

11 January 2025

Curlew (Above the Clouds)

II. residue

Standing At The Bar

Joan D’Arc

Hadley Richardson

III. riptide

Just Cold Waitin’

The Jile

Between the Lines

Garden Stone

IV. intravenous

Stop Looking at my Kandinsky

Shadow Crossing

I was Legendary (Pals for Life)

Win Win

The serf

V. alterity

Inventory Tag Missing

The Verb They Never Hear

VI. paroxysm

The Translation of the Ghost

VII. vicissitude

Love Poem

Old Mill

Everything I Could Not Say

Metamorph

An Ekphrastic Poem
Inspired by
The Entrance to the Tautira River, Tahiti: Fisherman Spearing a Fish
by John La Farge, c. 1895