Stephen Jackson
Pocket portfolio, a fatherly design,
designated driver’s flask, lapsed
bicycle license, the lions at night
under streetlamps crowned with
gold rays [the lions, that is] neither
friendly nor vicious, the uncertainty
charging the motherless air, thumbs
in pockets approaching the one
with a long chocolate mane, feeling
the words well up in the delicate
scruff of your own neck, summer
streets cluttered with boys obsessed
with odd-shaped balls, you listen
to them breathing [the lions, that is],
radio peep show of your soul, hell-
bent on a string of words, pocket
full of rhymes for the lions and
the first boy who will listen to them
with you, to help you disassemble
time, youthful, godlike, in design.
Stephen Jackson lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Other work appears in The American Journal of Poetry, Hole in the Head Review, Horse Egg Literary, Impossible Archetype, The Inflectionist Review, Line Rider Press, and Stone of Madness Press, as well as on the 2019 International Human Rights Art Festival Publishes platform. @fortyoddcrows