Thursday, August 4, 2022

Ben Jahn : Two poems

 

 

 

LOVE POEM

for Elise

let what was elect what is // rut / straddle / list // we did / we’re in / it doesn’t end / we did / we do / it lets us be both here and then / it’s this / we did / we’re right again // let what was elect what is // gut / strata / gist // says yes / says flesh / is what we went / with layers in layers / is soil on rock / biome in biome / is this in this / fresh impressed essence // let what was elect what is // love / heat / feed // what we’re in / now and there / are and were / always on / so long in / oils us / scrolls through / you me / me you // there was a time I knew / and knew you knew / it’s no less acute / now every day it is again / renewed / where we’re here / to get / together / a reminder / to remind us / why us / why this / why we let what is select what’s next

 

 

 

SCREENAGE ANGST HAS PAID OFF WELL

not on twitter so I waste these characters on biopic plots the woke bots won’t slot into your weekend mustwatch // at the refinery gates a band gathers / workers or concerned citizens / I can’t read their signs / their hands shake from neuropathy or cold / brinewaft off the tankered bay / I offer coffee but they decline / there’s no protest / they say / the company pays us to picket so locals passing by will think someone’s fighting / for what / we’re supposed to answer vaguely / working conditions / air quality / one of them reminds me of an old friend / gone now in the classic way / who got arrested protesting construction of a parking lot on a sacred site / he used to say there’s no such thing as a prehistoric cave painting or a market-based solution // dear fragmented audiences of parallel media realities in the blogosphere / this is depression / your first episode is free / imagine action as a ritual of belonging keeping you alive killing us all in two dimensions

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Jahn’s work has appeared in Fence, Tin House online, ZYZZYVA, McSweeney’s, and The Santa Monica Review. He received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in fiction, and his story, “Reborn,” appeared in The Paris Review as the winner of NPR’s Three Minute Fiction contest. He lives in Richmond, CA, not far (but usually upwind) from the Chevron refinery. He teaches English at Contra Costa College, and spends his summers traveling with his longtime partner and her kids. For infrequent updates, go to benjahn.com