Issue #34.4 Trevor Owen Jones, Simon Ravenscroft, Claudia Wilson
Two Poems by Trevor Owen Jones
O’Clock
The grandfather clock at midnight struck and kept striking after mechanical failure. The whole house awoke, it kept ringing and ringing for hours until it was seven thousand o’clock.
Shutting Up
Every day lately it seems there comes a moment to decide to shut up.
And every day, that moment arrives a little earlier than before:
The swimming pool is filled with spontaneous rain.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Trevor Owen Jones is a librarian in California.
________________________________________________________________________________________
A Poem by Simon Ravenscroft
Beside a salmon run
Outside under the heady pressure of air & cloud, a tide of common feeling makes for new atmospheres among the damned, leading to no distinct revelation perhaps but still significant to those involved. If the hazy interaction of things was better understood, life with others might be much more bearable. It is a known fact that the root of the wild carrot develops a bitterer taste in the presence of apples for example. But on the whole the porosities of material phenomena are in- adequately applied to social matters, the mental hygiene of the age preferring to clear them out into the recycling bin for the sake of some spurious con- ception of the individual will as monadic & self-sustaining, like a star.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Simon Ravenscroft has published poems recently in Heavy Feather Review, The Inflectionist Review, Exacting Clam, Atrium, Full House Literary, and other places. He is a Fellow of Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge, and has a website at: simonravenscroft.haus
________________________________________________________________________________________
A Poem by Claudia Wilson
For Dad and to the Cop that Killed Him on Accident.
Now, he is gone from me my father who rolled dumplings with his fingers standing over a steaming pot like a chevalier kept watch until they formed perfect clouds in a ladle of gravy.
You took him, officer like a lazy god takes water from his people because you can because you did.
I want to punch you in your stupid face until a blanket of blood covers you over and over until my hand is bent out of the shape of hope. You got to go back home after roaming the streets in your car the death machine kiss your family after a shift of carnage.
Now, he is gone from me my father crooning Dennis Brown’s Here I come with love and not hatred in his van after cleaning the shit from people’s carpets.
The noise collision makes is an awful song hissing from the road steaming from the tarmac. Dad would say he was grateful for everything he had.
Everyone and everything we’re gonna lose and I thought I would have you forever, dad, or at least longer than this.
For you, there is no cup I will not fill.
Meat off the bone made it to my plate piping hot, Dad blew on the food. he made for me. I can’t rid my hands of their desire to squeeze the life out of you, officer. To place my hands around that thick neck of cold blood.
The only thing that guards me are the songs my dad held in his voice and carried in his body singing them in the kitchen filled with himself, his food and his skin dark as mine holding a wooden spoon stirring.
________________________________________________________________________________________
Claudia Wilson is poet from Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. They studied English and Black Studies in college and earned their MFA. Their work lives at the intersections of identity, memory, and becoming—and is deeply rooted in the black church aesthetic. Claudia grew as a writer in spaces like The Writer’s Block in Columbus, and the Cantab Lounge and House Slam in Boston, which were foundational to their creative discipline. Claudia is a VONA Fellow, a Juniper Fellow, and a graduate of The Writer’s Hotel and most recently FAWC. Their debut chapbook, GROWN (Game Over Books, 2019), explored themes of growth, survival, and transformation. In addition to their literary work, Claudia is active in the mental health field, where they support community-based, peer-centered alternatives to suicide groups —intentional, non-carceral spaces that center honesty and self-determination. Claudia lives with their cat Pablo in Sunnydale and is All Elite.
________________________________________________________________________________________