J. Bradley is as talented as he is prolific: His surreal yet poignant work has appeared in scores of publications, and we were immensely flattered to include four of his poems in our Spring 2014 Issue. We posted one of those poems (“No More Poems About Resolutions”) back in January; now we’re very flappy to present “A Highly Magnified History,” “When a Poet Wants to Date You,” and “Yelp Review – Total Wine.”
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“A Highly Magnified History”
Chairs strain to support
the weight of want.
Mannequins shed felt
and wood, leaving sundresses,
blouses on skeletons;
they refuse to flap against
the artificial air.
“When a Poet Wants to Date You”
The mortuary sits on the coffee table,
nondescript. You think the cover
would be made of his skin, her skin.
He slaps your hand for accusing
his love of hemophilia;
the wine never clots.
“Yelp Review – Total Wine”
There are shelves of organs waiting to be pickled with special occasions. Pick a name like a rose to clench or to cast into fire, water, or wind. Pick how you will revise a memory, what desert to costume your tongue with; forgiveness is something you can never drown in, no matter how hard your lungs want it.
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J. BRADLEY is the author of the graphic poetry collection, The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014). He lives at iheartfailure.net.
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