Letter 072124
Dear Ethan Hawke
This hasn’t been a success. Time is the sex life of distance. Snake said nothing, but we’d all hear our own way into sound near the tree of loneliness. You name things to forget who you are. I played with my kids, then didn’t. Shaved my head when there was nothing to eat. The miracle should have been shrapnel to snow. Graves ache nowhere into being. With movies, the bleeding is internal. I hear an owl because that’s what it knows to be. God dies at the speed of god.
Letter 072024
Dear Ethan Hawke
Ghosts are angel money. Everyone in hell lets me love them. The letters will stop. My kids won’t die.
sleeping
back to back
dying
Letter 071924
Dear Ethan Hawke
The writing is only going to get more beautiful. Stop growing, we say. Sleep directs its first play. Its only. God in a glacier. Bombs have everywhere to go.
My sister was born inside a man with no fingers. I held a toy gun. My nose bled. A camera with a human memory told me for many years about my son.
Letter 071724
Dear Ethan Hawke
I feel I’ve been in the room where I’ll die. My little nod to a flower is god at this hour.
A glass god tapping the mirror that smells like your baby’s head.
Itch dying
on an angel’s eye.
Damn this reading blew me away. Deeply salted thanks to Melissa Eleftherion and Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong for speaking to the body, the insect, the bird-inspired stone.
The reading is available on the youtube channel of the reading series HERE
Letter 071424 think hard on nothing on a farm machine
Dear Ethan Hawke
God is a response to distance destroying itself. Top surgery as a password should surprise no one. Our radios are not the same. My love for line breaks has no end. Ends here. I know the kid’s name but suicide isn’t as specific as a speeding ticket. That poor mom. The rifle of longing, the handgun of birth. This smalltown lightning, starstruck by a colorless proximity.
What a special reading this was today. Thanks to Saba Keramati and Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi for saying the said and for speaking both to and into.
The reading is available on the youtube channel of the reading series HERE
Next reading is tomorrow. Info is below.
Email bluejawedsnake@gmail.com for the Zoom link and to sign up for the open mic.
Sunday, July 14th, 4pm EST:
featured Melissa Eleftherion and Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong
Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. Born & raised in Brooklyn, she holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Mills College, and San Jose State University. They are the author of two poetry collections, field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & gutter rainbows (Querencia Press, 2024), twelve chapbooks including abject sutures (above/ground press, 2024), & several books currently touring the rejection circuit. Her work has been widely published & featured in venues like Quarter after Eight, Sixth Finch, Entropy, & Barren Magazine. Melissa now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Ukiah. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong is from Oregon. Her poems can be found in ONLY POEMS, Shenandoah, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Columbia Review, among others. She is a Wednesday's child.
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other readings for the I Think I Can't Speak For Everyone Here series:
4/21/24 Benjamin Niespodziany and NC Smock
4/28/24 Tom Snarsky and Darren C Demaree
5/18/24 Jay Besemer and Nadia Arioli
5/19/24 Pamela Kesling and Bee Morris
5/26/24 Alina Stefanescu and Dylan Krieger
7/7/24 Devan Murphy and William Erickson
kingsoftrain 