Aerial Rumour
Time travel is only possible in July
when the bird returns the church bells
to exactly the same position
you last heard love sound.
How do I fill up on the dead?
My intuition, my kneecaps; nothing
can end. Things appear real
because they continue –
this echo belonging to the lip
is your voice on the phone, is
air held together in sense.
What is the density
of sense in a glass
if it can’t water your mouth?
You call to tell me
Notre Dame is on fire
and you’re out of rehab.
Outside in New York
the birds hem together leaves.
My heart pricks for their metronome.
Thin Land
Far off, imagination is not
a luxury, it is a beehive
or procession of soldiers,
a green rinse, an alarm,
lemonade or a July directive,
a liquor interrupting the tongue,
a tongue interrupting the air;
my tongue, musical like a hook,
tears at each side of the mouth.
Say something under pressure.
Explain tenderness.
Eggshell as intact as the skull –
can’t quite empty itself
and survive.
Jordan Joy Hewson is a poet from Dublin living in Brooklyn where she works developing civic action technology for a start up she founded called Speakable.
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