Amputee Dresden The earth in summer Que Sera The Pier Amputee It's too late, your head has already been filled with clumsy dreams that pin you to the operating table like ice picks on a three-thousand mile hike through Siberia you feel like an amputee, no, you are the next broken soldier waiting to have your consonants sheared o                         f              f until you are afraid of speaking because only sounds come out you bleed alphabet soup from your pores, and you worry that there are not enough pots in your house to catch them before they are julbemd and (forgotten) but you scratch your every breath onto park benches and blackboards with the last inch of your nails, knowing that the coroner will think you were trying to claw your way out of an imaginary prison because you are, and I promise you, that is the most beautiful thing in the world. Dresden I. Trust that I am a little bit in love with you when I bind you to the catacombs with my hand branded on your cheeks and a fifty- pound knapsack of my letters to somebody else, And I hope, when the shadows grow long enough to swallow the moon, you will not mistake them for your tears, but rather the lengths to which I would go to kiss the chapped layers of your wrists in the coldest winter of them all. II. There is no glory in braving the agony of a billion beautiful dreams dying before me, and the clashing pin-strikes against my chest, but a sentinel's lungs never die, a soldier never cries, And I endure, I would in place of everything we stand for, if you could trust that I am a little bit in love with you. The earth in summer I want to write a poem about the way the sun sets, high over the brow of summer, the mildewed lash of an acorn nestled in the earth's warm lips, and the first crack of light through our brown and brittle shells, So that in some not-so-distant future I can lie here without waiting for the grass to die around us, count, simply, the mileage of your palms and know that it has got me farther than the tire tracks in my chest, Under oak trees, the sun-burnt breeze runs low like ocean currents against my legs, against our roots, tangled too closely together now, till the rough-hewn architecture resembles something more beautiful than my human heart, its unsymmetrical spires pining for doom. Que Sera i. The sand behind your ears from Acapulco is smeared across my clavicles, spotted like your freckles, and I swear I'll never take a shower after this, inverted red impressions, grooves, unmade scars, breathing, breathing like the world revolves in a single day, beneath the glare of martini glass at dusk. ii. Near the sea, our feet are webbed with kelp, forming coral reefs against the tide, and I want to build sand castles around your knees with coffee cups and whiskey, so baby turtles can breathe against the sweat of your toes like me at three a.m. or never, when your hair has turned indigo, and my hands fall off from all this touching, and laughing. The Pier I am addicted to the way your eyes look into the dusk, half-closed and misty grey, the way Your fingers probe my arm like soldiers to their doom, every sinew on fire, and every nerve crackling with the electricity of first lovers.

Stockholm, 1973 Temporary Lover Today is a poem When you're through with him Why We Stay Stockholm, 1973 My walls, pallid against my skin, sing of Atlantic buoyancy and krill clinging to anchors. How hollow saplings await hummingbirds, twigs growing from imaginary trunks. I am a million humming- birds, all lifting an old sky and fighting nativity for my parish of captivity, Roots growing around scars, warm as quilts stitching tight without that sour pity of charity. Temporary Lover Already the train's whistle is blowing blue in the distance, its smoke fraying at the corners of the sky. I tap my Chucks as I would on the decks of cargo ships (for luck), and I salute Every lover on the platform waving but mine, whose far-stretching eyes have no hold on the hem of my tattered jeans, "Good-bye," she does not whisper. I am aching to leave be- hind nothing and everything snagged in my father's pines; I am an Island cocking its ear towards where his voice joins my mother's song, clinging to every note and every key but my own. "Home" tastes of the morning light through St. Peter's stained glass windows Melting under London rain, sleeping with Arlington grass nestled against my ears, dreaming the gates of Zijin Cheng open to the tears of the rising sun. But those are just words penciled in the faded map against my ribs, nostalgic and Quaint as my grandfather the almost-explorer riffling through the pages of old journals that stain my thoughts with possibility. It is almost time for tea where I am standing, but the train heaves Under the rift and bridge of the Chunnel, and my vision fades like the memories of a temporary lover, wearing only skin. My fingers itch for the touch of xeranthema pressed against Rosseau's pages, Yellowed by the years, as if I could imagine my zenith like Everest peeking over the gray of the horizon. Today is a poem Today is a poem because the butterflies pinned against your bedroom wall broke free. (I saw them staggering like clouds of dust, pupal crust coating their frozen wings.) Today is a poem because a bolt of lightning struck the palm tree you always hated. (In the center, a hummingbird's nest lay to rest the bodies of six fledglings.) Today is a poem because well, because you left your window open hoping that magic would tickle your shattered toes. I don't know if you were hoping to feel me too, but I was standing there, and today is a poem, I think, because it's harder to live than yesterday. When you're through with him Please remember to scavenge the wrappings from your armoire, fill a casket with the heavy children of letters and leave him as neatly as you found him, Like the time you carved a silhouette from rusted foil, pasted it to the one window the sun never touches, and kissed it with the hem of your sleeve until the glass bled with soot, and I imagine the mascara clinging to your cheekbones like glaciers, watching sunsets from the edge of the world, and never looking down, no matter how far you fall. Why We Stay Your knuckles are smoking like a wailing train, My shoelaces are sinking in rough terrain, like slugs melting in thunderstorms coated with blue rust. And I am, yet, and you are, here. If I have dreams, what I remember are the pillars knotted with fear, up and infinite against the sky. So if I could lie one more time: there are things that I cannot hold in my palm, but if I could I would tie them round my pinkies and never let go.

Hate and Love (2009)
Collection of Short Fiction

A compilation of the best of Jake's short fiction, written in his last teen years. Nostalgic, heart-wrenching, sometimes vindictive and often insightful, Hate and Love represents his psychological journey in search of what makes us human.

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