Ritual of Astonishments
Soaked in soot and creosote,
bitumen and hoarfrost,
the broken ghost spoke,
a raspy whistle of rosin on catgut:
“What trestle-climbed root forsook you?
Throw back your throat to the black uncaring
fibrous icy air.” I had no clue
what to reply — who would? I eyed the door,
injured where he’d entered. He kicked
the rime from his mud-sucked boots,
turned to the petrified mirror
and uncaked the blood from his beard.
"Unravel the strands of dawn," he carried on,
"and you'll grasp the hem of midnight's gown.
These birds sing only to my naked
wound and its rust-pipe dreams.” Lunatic
as a pile of moon boots, yet a terrible tulip
wavered brightly on a hill in the breath
of a vernal morning within the monstrosity’s
dream almost as soon as he clambered
into my bed, almost as soon
as his head hit my pillow.
Sonnet 4
I’ll chalk a dotted line from nape to groin
with a shaky surgeon’s hand. I’ll draw enough
to gargle like a cough nostrum your blood,
thick and cool in my larynx, copper as coin.
And when your blistered spirit rises, clawing
at the seams of the veil, a stillborn in your clutch,
it will sound like little more than the gravelly hush
of crepitus, absent-minded complaint of the joints.
Then the hangman will arrive, his knuckles around
the crumpled sheaf of paperwork for your acquittal.
It will dawn on you hilariously that you stink.
Tumbling from his mouth like pirouetting flowers
come cheery daydreams so bloodcurdling you’ll wriggle
out of your skin to get the man a drink.
J. L. Yocum is a musician and poet living in Brooklyn. He holds a B.A. in English Composition, concentration Poetry, from the University of North Texas, and is a staff poetry reader for Quarterly West. His poems have appeared in Albatross, The Orchards Poetry Journal, ionosphere, The Big Windows Review, The Broken Teacup, Pinhole Poetry, $ Poetry Is Currency, Thimble Literary Magazine and Luna Luna, and are forthcoming in The Comstock Review and Moonday Mag. His musical endeavors span a few decades and a handful of projects, including work on the soundtrack of at least one award-winning film. He pays the rent working in a fine-art-adjacent industry and splits the bills with his wife and their indolent marmalade tabby.