“Hey Joe” is one of two gritty & gunslingin’ poems by Jeremiah Driver in our Winter 2019 issue.

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BECAUSE IT’S QUIET AND CRAZY ONE HAS REASON
to pause. Because questions
can fill the space between two people
and open anybody wider than another’s answers.
Because a truth that can be told
isn’t true. Where you goin’

with that gun in your hand? Because the first note
transforms Jimi from Jimi

who becomes a teller who is asking
Joe, who is not Jimi,
nor the person Jimi is not
the gun.

We listen because someone will die
someone will murder
because he caught her messing round with another man
but the shot is not heard. There are notes,
chords, and rhythm—blues: polyphonic shuffling

dysfunction that functions to melt people’s brains
so that the daemon can live
as long as people listen.

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JEREMIAH DRIVER earned an MFA in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College, won the Thomas Lux Award, has been a horse trainer, a service member in the United States Army, worked heavy construction in Manhattan, and taught literacy/ writing in Queens and the Bronx. He blogs at jeremiahdriver.wordpress.com. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Terminus, Columbia Journal, UCity Review, Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland, and Piecrust.