Jason Fraley
5 poems
**
[Bullet trains are our latest death-defying invention.]
Bullet trains are our latest death-defying invention. Hop aboard and drink your journey in one gulp. I recognize no one when we arrive—the most indelible moment of the journey.
Girls! Girls! Girls! I remember when gender didn’t need an advertisement.
Another hundred miles of verdant blur.
Rewind.
The smell of fresh towels in the morning means I’ve overslept.
The first rule for living: be somewhere else before the mattress steals your shape.
**
[The wrecking ball, civilization’s bass beat,]
......The wrecking ball, civilization’s bass beat, provides a rhythm. Combat boots
......have never served so many purposes. Businessmen, pulling tie knots into ever-
......tighter fists, pass by in hydraulically-precise processions. Under the zenithed
......sun’s invasive light, you contort into a hieroglyph, dance as if carpet bombed by
......stinging nettles. Your hips are partially erased by the pavement’s shimmer-
......haze. This is the season when God’s divine bifurcation is most acute. A
......symbiotic clutch. A glimmer in your topaz eyes. One way or another, I’m
......passing these genes on as dust.
**
......[Is it wrong to strike a corpse with a sack of apples?]
......Is it wrong to strike a corpse with a sack of apples? He used to slur lullabies
......before bed. You argue this night is a simulacrum because there is no red line
......demarcating dawn. The moon is a shadow machine. I am being reduced to
......blue wire. I envy your tangled blonde hair. It’s a perfect replication of my
......knotted reproductive system. Bring me a wheelbarrow so I can spread my legs
......and birth this fist of yarn. It will not take root here. Semantics didn’t keep this
......corpse from its ivory-sequined kingdom. Don’t deny my pleasures.
**
[Today’s newspaper headline: silence is the new imminence.]
Today’s newspaper headline: silence is the new imminence.
I’m binocular-eyed on an exposed hillock, but you prefer an audience. Lizard-lithe on alabaster rock, your unlatched lips are an open mailbox, a hazmat team’s tango partner, the perfect size for an explosive lozenge.
You can’t simply wring ethanol from corn. Can you wring marrow from bone, songs from a cardinal’s throat, honey from a parched scroll?
Ribs are a broken harp in need of skilled hands.
**
......[Helicopter-dropped, you give the ocean its only frame]
......Helicopter-dropped, you give the ocean its frame. Currents smooth entrance
......fissures. How a shell consumes and miniaturizes this vastness you’ll never
......know. There are more pressing matters, however, as swimming to shore is not
......an option: you must die and awaken sand-blasted holy. Blackout is enough
......time for winter to transform the water into a glass runway for the wave-battered
......wind. Salt-stitched catharsis. From a distance, you glow like a derelict star
......uncomfortable in any light.
**
return to sawbuck 3.1
**
Jason Fraley works as an investment advisor and compliance officer in Columbus, OH. His work has appeared in Forklift Ohio, 42opus, The Hat, Pebble Lake Review, Caketrain, and Fifth Wednesday Journal.
**
[Bullet trains are our latest death-defying invention.]
Bullet trains are our latest death-defying invention. Hop aboard and drink your journey in one gulp. I recognize no one when we arrive—the most indelible moment of the journey.
Girls! Girls! Girls! I remember when gender didn’t need an advertisement.
Another hundred miles of verdant blur.
Rewind.
The smell of fresh towels in the morning means I’ve overslept.
The first rule for living: be somewhere else before the mattress steals your shape.
**
[The wrecking ball, civilization’s bass beat,]
......The wrecking ball, civilization’s bass beat, provides a rhythm. Combat boots
......have never served so many purposes. Businessmen, pulling tie knots into ever-
......tighter fists, pass by in hydraulically-precise processions. Under the zenithed
......sun’s invasive light, you contort into a hieroglyph, dance as if carpet bombed by
......stinging nettles. Your hips are partially erased by the pavement’s shimmer-
......haze. This is the season when God’s divine bifurcation is most acute. A
......symbiotic clutch. A glimmer in your topaz eyes. One way or another, I’m
......passing these genes on as dust.
**
......[Is it wrong to strike a corpse with a sack of apples?]
......Is it wrong to strike a corpse with a sack of apples? He used to slur lullabies
......before bed. You argue this night is a simulacrum because there is no red line
......demarcating dawn. The moon is a shadow machine. I am being reduced to
......blue wire. I envy your tangled blonde hair. It’s a perfect replication of my
......knotted reproductive system. Bring me a wheelbarrow so I can spread my legs
......and birth this fist of yarn. It will not take root here. Semantics didn’t keep this
......corpse from its ivory-sequined kingdom. Don’t deny my pleasures.
**
[Today’s newspaper headline: silence is the new imminence.]
Today’s newspaper headline: silence is the new imminence.
I’m binocular-eyed on an exposed hillock, but you prefer an audience. Lizard-lithe on alabaster rock, your unlatched lips are an open mailbox, a hazmat team’s tango partner, the perfect size for an explosive lozenge.
You can’t simply wring ethanol from corn. Can you wring marrow from bone, songs from a cardinal’s throat, honey from a parched scroll?
Ribs are a broken harp in need of skilled hands.
**
......[Helicopter-dropped, you give the ocean its only frame]
......Helicopter-dropped, you give the ocean its frame. Currents smooth entrance
......fissures. How a shell consumes and miniaturizes this vastness you’ll never
......know. There are more pressing matters, however, as swimming to shore is not
......an option: you must die and awaken sand-blasted holy. Blackout is enough
......time for winter to transform the water into a glass runway for the wave-battered
......wind. Salt-stitched catharsis. From a distance, you glow like a derelict star
......uncomfortable in any light.
**
return to sawbuck 3.1
**
Jason Fraley works as an investment advisor and compliance officer in Columbus, OH. His work has appeared in Forklift Ohio, 42opus, The Hat, Pebble Lake Review, Caketrain, and Fifth Wednesday Journal.
Labels: 3.1, jason fraley
