I dip my body in a paint that makes rain cry.
Alcohol is a warden.
I read re-predicted nonfiction.
I miss
my mom
with god
with god
I miss
my mom.
What if all I’ve taught my children is how
to love me.
I want to touch all the writers
in the places
numbed
by what
they read.
I watch that one movie where you pretend to be
disabled
poor
my smarter
brother.
Possessed by return
god
is unbearable.
Imaginary
bombs
imagine.
BLOODMERCY
I.S. Jones
APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner
Copper Canyon, 2025
Ah what an urgent patience is given an anxious peace by the immediate vision of I.S. Jones as versed in holy thematics that pin nostalgia to a renamed surrounding. Our place in common is Bloodmercy, a ghost psalm that kings a father’s absence, and a landmark that earns its place with celestial hardness, wicked accuracy, and remnant reminiscence. Existence can’t solve the living. Twin butchers climb too high the tree of boredom. Bloodmercy is a work that occurs in the genesis of again. Oh how sound ages want. Oh how a mouth prays to itself to know its shape. Debone, in the reading, in the aftermath of Abel’s bent childhood of straightened witness, the belonged body. Killing doesn’t cure murder. Sisterhood is a shelter stormed by pattern. Abuse a scarecrow of bored angels. Violence leaves history to those arriving. What Jones reimagines beats us to the dream.
I'm not
close
to anyone
Without Jesus I don’t think God recovers the password of every angel. I’m poor and I yell at people. Melancholy nonsense. It’s the blue comes inside the blue. A dove is bitten by a moth. A baby cries for a baby out. Language won’t tell you what to say. My cigarette has two dreams
plastic
and arthritis)
I eat until food touches food.
A real gun
should do more.
Your mother sleeps to mourn the secret ghost of your death
Horse
has its blurry
life
The killing, the movies, the drinking. A spotlight stolen by a man in a deer costume. My son saying he wants to live at home until his brother dies. God’s dream, too small.
/
rocks have the softest shadows, 237 pages
poems, Dec 2020
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untouched in the capital of soon, 187 pages
poems, Sept 2021
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blood to bathe us in its blue past, 217 pages
poems new and selected, May 2022
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apartures, 125 pages
poems, January 2023
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deer as permission to die in ohio, 43 poems
chapbook, April 2023
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naked in dog years, 55 pages
April 2024
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57
Letters to Ethan Hawke, or I wanted to stop saying god
letters 1-57
August 2024
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The Crow's Book of Wrists, 193 pages
August 2024
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angel tantrum, 171 pages
April 2025
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Eden created time so Eve could end god’s suffering. I only worry about my son’s death because I can’t leave his dying to others. That’s the alcohol being silent. Watching is just seeing a cyclops cry. Fuck that kid, is what you’re saying. Skin is the real winner. The bone has a bone’s name.
There is no god left for god to impress. At night I grow in my arm an arm for my son. My dream lasts for three days. An animal forgetting to drink. A perfect stick crying itself white in a hell of dog heads. Sex doesn’t know what this poem is about. Eating is a shape death knows to eat around. Heaven only looks abandoned. Imagine a shooting range. Not that one.
A deer
helps lightning
run
from a ghost
A deer helps lightning run from a ghost
I have a gun
but the world is empty
I am still smaller than the god of my aim
Wait
Regret
has a moth
to bury
kingsoftrain 