Author: JJ Rowan

how we gather
07.01.2018-07.15.2018

we get us longitude and attitude
we pour one into the other
we need a handshake for this kind of notation
we chop our gratitude into the salsa
we are happy-sore
we go buzz buzz buzz
we borrow strong from other stanzas
we get seen
we feel ridiculous (an affirmation)
we are smitten
we are the only animals in the dance area
we are, yup, still doing this
we don’t pick a genre
we love our own imperfect confusion
we ask the page unbinaried questions
hoping for unbinaried answers
we get what we get
we know even before we know
we take a leap
we have a nice potato supper
we feel everything all wound together
how we show up
how we dream
what we reach for
what reminds us
what tender examples
what burning remainders
how the future burns
and the present
how we sob 
and rend
even if we feel like this forever
there’s no forever

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i always love gathering here w/ y’all each year but this year it held me extra. thank you. <3 jj

radishes
07.15.2017-07.31.2017

sharp red handful walking the perimeter of the house
that isn’t a house it’s a room that fell off someone else’s
this heater isn’t a real heater but this winter won’t be a real
winter so the math works out, the mail comes reluctantly
but often

beast & me we hold hands & with the other hand
radish to mouth, sharp right out of the ground so then
the game of pages, make the new ones with the old ones
all these kinds of breaking breaking in

look the radio in the eyes but the video won’t populate
it’s a mood, looking, it’s a leafy green escape hatch i kept
ignoring until someone threw me out of it

the library outdates the miles but most of the books don’t
make it the final hundreds, maybe books are the most
necessary lover & confidant, maybe you can’t flatten your feet
on rubble, maybe you were waiting to be ready, maybe you’re waiting
still for a line you can barely remember, maybe you forgot radishes
come out of the earth & so did you

leaving normal avenue
07.15.2016-07.31.2016

caught open in the get down going notebook-under and when the quiet doesn’t come you go harder, you go duh, you go deep into the park, you go into the next life. the doors of the shed open quietly because you’ve gone late night kitten mode, you’ve gone satiated goat mode & good for it, there’s nothing left to chew. you get out of your head and into the sea. you’re starting to look alike (you & you). you’ve gone somewhere the mail doesn’t deliver but the letter arrives anyway, you bask in it unopened as long as you can. inside the envelope a beating heart, a series of scrappy reminders not yet written. you put your whole body on the page. you save a utensil and spoon a beast. you chatter and nuzzle. you’re your own mamma bird. you’re your own father time. you’re a handsome fellow hooking leaves. you cut and confuse. you lift something raw to your lips. you sip something hot. you ready the altar of your writing down, it’s a poetics of what’s on hand. you sit down in the coffee shop and write for ten years. you keep a curl’s eye view on existence. you take the self portrait inside the next life after moving a queen mattress with your small car, you & you finally making a go of it.

macintosh apples in southern oregon
10.01.2015-10.15.2015

a little injury among victories
transplants me exactly where i am

no tick no flea all belly, the luxury
of wild fur in your fingers

i’m not the baby but i do rock me
& then i swing me, greenly

drink the afterwhiskey, still swinging

my heart also grows in spirals
but i can only document my head

i am beating and turning and emptying
out and opening up and beastly

the sky of local clouds parts & the sun
breaks the woods, soft legion

comfort w/ reds surrounded by greens

mid-week irrelevance in the gutted
phone booth

when i fall, i fall to the east
of exactly where i am

where we’re going & how we’ll get there

this year i’m finally weaving in the moments i saw 
gawd pressing fresh blueberries into thick pancake batter
in the hot pan, for a whole moment there was only pressing,
witnessing the batter become & the beverage prickling
beside this warm thickness telling it to give. someone hands over
the blue of the thorn–did we already speak about this?
time is met with red. anticipation is a walk that time will reduce.
i’ve anticipated the room, the anyway one, the will we
in our dreams by building it thicken, warm, more reality
than what already exists, moving through our various forms
to completion. how can we deny it? if we already are it
how can we say it was never there? never possible? i run
the practice scenario & you believe me, that she will
introduce me as daughter to another stranger in public,
but i don’t run like i used to, i don’t have the patience
to tend every plucked thing in the vessel, the water sticks
or glitches, the big blue sky pulls me out of it, through its
vitality, holding the day’s unofficial theme (blue), wrapping it
in the blue big plaid snap shirt where it hangs (wanes),
it holds even when the water drains, letting what falls fall
but not rushing it, there is no final form

the angel sings
07.01.2017-07.15.2017

i was curled – but did not curl – into worship – sipping my mood like a bottle to keep me quiet – isn’t it another beautiful evening – doesn’t the light dance off our weeping – isn’t it just the right shade of blue in here – doesn’t the wind go west while the coast collects what we whisper – but what collects what we exclaim – what fuses the swing of our voices to a feather to float upward & outward – & what of the feather that faces the ground, bears down & down – doesn’t the light dance into our clenching eyes – is this a splinter or a post – is this my face snuggling up to emptiness – denying mood for a sigil – the feral mothers of the congregation subdue themselves again, put on happy, put on friday – the neighbor pulls lunch right out of the ground – we’re visited by darkness on the patio, cloud & companions casting a point on a line, the lazy gaze of those who would tend our mouths set at an angle relative to the good word of the day – and the song comes

what’s on my egg?

start shell, not egg but creature
all these legs ooze to move
cup the yolk with knee pit and
squeeze: egg is mess
it’s busy, queer as antennae
trans as jesus
my egg is thick forest over blanket
of snow: egg hot, egg cold
slime might be how i like it
cooked tender
turned over
frond on bug on dirt mound
and roll, slip
egg in good company
never just one egg
got a shell gender, it contains
everything soft
it reaches
crosses a branch and a stone

water not pictured
02.01.2023-02.15.2023

the notebook is changing
to make room for my left hand
but the script is just passing
through
the spine cures for a month
connecting me to you
but we’re both looking at the water
we’re both so full
of miles
we’re neither of us new
i dot the grid in your direction
pen to tongue
i say some words against romance
call what moves in me
water
instead
if you can’t see the water through
the back cover
please know it’s moving
there’s no earth without water

a twenty-four hour fear of gawd
06.15.2017-06.30.2017

i wasn’t ready to slip the ring’s purpose
to its opposite so i talked about the good fear
a flood is not an explosion but you can
tell a story where they intersect so that breaking
down is for ideas and not hearts, not bodies
exposure of new surfaces makes the lesson hum
the time you spend where spend is currency’s
damn opposite
more time thinking singing writing dancing talking
more movement onto the porch of being alive
more feelings more mood more cold stones of the river
more blue more squeeze more honest body and what
it contains
in the late night of unreadyness there is space
in a self, what you carve out for friends & lovers
& befriending and loving yourself in those waves
loving your ghostlegs loving your womanhood
and otherwise loving talking to yourself on the sunstoop
loving the gut feeling
the curl of it, it spirals: don’t believe you’re ever out
of magic don’t ignore you don’t forget to say hello to you
from another spot on the timeline, note the thunderstorm
as welcome committee note the bug on the frond 
counting you note the sky’s sore legs after booming
someone tosses you a barb don’t open your hand
catch beauty’s little thorn well that’s something different
learn to pull over when the sky wants to hold you
practice leaving a little blood for the thorn