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Jonterri Gadson


Cling

We both grip the fountain's
damp lip, lose our knuckle tips
 
just beneath the water's surface,
our cheeks lift into simultaneous
 
hello smiles, while the ivy spreads
like fresh disease in the corner's shadow.
We've come here to talk about us.
 
Had I known freedom
could matter so much,
 
I would have loosed the ivy’s vines
from the cold stone hold
 
of that mildewing, chipped, brick
wall then; would have plucked
each leaf off above their stems,
 
let the vines sprawl naked
in the dirt like earth's veins.
 
I'd had enough of watching
the slightest changes ripple
 
our reflections unrecognizable.
You'd grown tired of the shade
 
shifting, had enough of trying.
Still, we walked out together,
our wind rustling the evergreen ivy
 
that, unlike us, would lose nothing
for clinging, climbing, desperate,
 
struggling to rise
toward an unreachable sun.

Finding Idaho

Your first mistake is believing
every aerial photo of anywhere
shows the roll of sagebrush
over the singed desert valley--
symptoms of a slow-setting sun.

Eyes that never leave a mother’s
windows believe they’ve found home
in the first cluster of roofs in a cul-de-sac,

believe they know each troubling pass—
how steep, how thin, how rocky,
where the road has no railing,
the exact spot where you learned to yield.   

Home Improvement

Rust scars surviving colors
in Seattle’s skyline, spreads as scabs

across red scrap metal, rots in speckles
over yellowing fences, blossoms

like bruises on a blue shed
in a backyard where he pummels
a cement patio to dust as a hobby.

Her face in the window reflects
wet ruin, counts each punished stone.

Picture


Jonterri Gadson's Profile

Symptoms of a Slow Setting Sun

Think sagebrush rolling, no high-pitched

oo wee oo wee oooo, no gray western flick,


real tumbleweed passes through high beams

on two lane roads, sticks in your wheel sockets.



This town cut in on the desert’s dance

with forest-shawled mountains, left her laying sun-licked,

brush ablaze, bulldozed for paved roads, intersected.



Suffer a sleight of hand, a misplaced moment

of reflection and nearby cliffs will kill you.

Here, the sun is a woman’s full breast,



tickled by tip-tops of evergreens,

this is her blushing sky. She’s the light that saves

or maims you, depending on how bent she is to shine.


​
No one has touched me for weeks              
yet in this drugged, gilt afternoon, late,              


when nothing is safe, I’m paralyzed,              
as though so wildly desired              
​
-from “Midas Passional” by Lisa Russ-Spaar             .                         

Woman, Feral

:  Finds Herself   

lost in thoughts of gold hairs
sprouting from another        
woman’s nape

as if they could
be rope enough
for reaching.

:  Considers Sunlight

Even with the unrelenting
press of you
against my bare back,
I cannot be convinced
of the necessity
of shadows

:  Considers Suicide

doesn’t want
to be found

heaving at the highest point
of her wreckage,

praying for lightning.
Would rather believe
in magic, in communing
with other disappeared things:

rabbits, women’s torsos, rope snippings.

​
Picture

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