STRATUS OPACUS

poems by Jeff P. Jones

ISNBN 13: 978-1-59948-124-1,
Poetry chapbook, ~40 pages, $10

Projected release date: April 28, 2008

***Advance discount purchase price of $7 will be available until April 21, 2008.*** (subject to change without notice)

About the Author / Samples / Comments

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About the Author

Jeff P. Jones was born and raised in Aurora, Colorado. He earned a master's degree in International Studies with a focus on Russia from the University of Washington. He lives on the Palouse and teaches writing at the University of Idaho. His poems appear in Fourth River, Hawai'i Pacific Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

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Samples

 

DISCLAIMER

 

Any Mistakes Remain Mine (Not A Suicide Note)

Any good in this
And I mean this
In the largest possible
Sense is not of me

I'm never so up
As when I'm down
Swaying fall light torn
Weak to strong then back again

Squirrels race across the roof like
The world's on fire
Vicodin shifting
Unshiftable things

(Father forgive me)

Nights my hold to life
My father's breathing
A quiet sound
Like rain or someone weeping

Worst of all are those moments
Like scars to the face
That never leave
Unseen unredeemed

So many mistakes
Though I can't see them you do
Count this as proof
These wrists made red

OTHER UNIVERSES

 

On the horizon in his mind he pictures a ship
outside detail, an answer puffing in and out
from its stems, something sea tasting, bloody
fists plying sand. Artillery bursts shake hands
from keyboards as the desert presses against
his boot soles, his voice coordinating gunpowder
with breathing things. It's a direct line to God.
He whispers your location, waits like a pause
after prayer, then it comes, the answer the confetti
you once were billowing his tent wall in puffs
of phosphorous-infused sand motes, tiny suns
burning like the centers of other universes,
places unlike this one, where the sun presides
over the sea like a royal czar. Where we scratch
lines and wait. Where we scratch lines and wait.

 

LISTENING TO TONY EARLEY IN IDAHO

Across Lake Pontchartrain, past the curled
carcass of a water moccasin,
the ibis and flamingo marsh,
past tin-roofed, ramshackle,
screenless shacks, she says,

Look. The moon hangs in the bare branches
of the live oak, black tropical sky,
bed the size of a small fiefdom.
Oh sure, the desk clerk says.
Ghosts live everywhere.

My mind goes.
The gleaming bald head,
two points of light like white eyes,
alone onstage but for a grand
piano draped in an olive green cozy.

It was that picture we saw today,
she says. The woman in the silk dress,
white blur against the darker lawn.
By the poster that said,
I got laid in N'Awlins.

Like a petroleum engineer
forced to dowse, he hates felt overshoes,
magnetometers, spectroscopes,
cameras, cheap microphones,
séances, psychics.

That fallen
Southern Baptist twang:
oaks bearded with Spanish moss,
blooming crepe myrtles, cicadas,
parapsychologist in Bermuda shorts.

It's Chloë, she says, the octoroon
mistress who was tree-hanged for baking
oleander into a cake
fed by the red forkful
to the white daughters.

Have you ever heard children's laughter
rising up through the woman's low love
moans in the room where the little
boy said, Make my sisters
get off the ceiling?

Garden dark
snuffs the gleaming eyes
as he calls her name, Chloë…
Chloë…Chloë?…until the cold
becomes the fear becomes the hell-haunted world.

Why do southern writers like you
think western writers are morose?
Why is your story chiastic?
What are you writing now?
What age did you start?

Seven. A story about Bigfoot,
but the southeastern Bigfoot, who is
smaller and meaner (than yours).
What does chiastic mean?
Aren't cowboy songs sad?

But unspoken
until the dark climb through
the old arboretum's dead trunks
is a question curling toward the silver
spur of a new moon: Do you believe in ghosts?