by Emma Thomas Jones
for BW
After the movie, I met you in the theater’s low-lit alley,
where we resurrected your blue lips into peonies.
A funny feeling, your body warming to persistent touch.
We talked about it on the phone all night—the kiss
and Nirvana, deep space, metal bands you liked.
Why you didn’t believe in God: your father, who abandoned you
in the public park for days. Why you changed your name
from his to something you could wield. Blade,
you were wrong about Cobain. He wasn’t killed
by Love. Saying this made you angry, but we agreed
to disagree. When I said I couldn’t be your girlfriend
if you didn’t go to church, it was my fear of faith rearing
like a minotaur—ugly and large. Still, you agreed to eat
Jesus’s body in the form of wafers. We laughed when
you said Jesus reminded you of Lance sandwich crackers
squirreled from picnic tables when you were young and starving;
that the kid-friendly communion grape juice never quenched
your thirst like the park’s fountain. It wasn’t funny. You drank
by sealing your mouth to the fountain’s spout,
kissing everyone who stopped to swallow that water.
::
Title from a song by Nirvana.
Emma Thomas Jones, also known as E. Thomas Jones, is a bi+ poet from Georgia who holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee as well as the recipient of the 2018 Lily Peter fellowship and the 2019 C. D. Wright/Academy of American Poets Prize. She has been published in The Southern Review, The McNeese Review, American Literary Review, and others. She currently resides in Northwest Arkansas with her partner, Jami Padgett. Find her on Twitter/X @_ethomasjones.
Image: Hamid Siddiqi
ID: close-up photo of a drinking fountain.
Psaltery & Lyre 