Poem: Love Letter to a Dead Body

I’m intrigued by the strain in Jake Skeet’s poem: Its title juxtaposes love with loss of life, and its rhythms press towards the nettle-like pictures. The primary stanza’s pictures are scarred and tough with “burr and sage,” “bottles” and the “cirrhosis moon,” but the strains sound like a nursery rhyme (the primary two strains are completely trochaic and the third is iambic). Many different strains on this poem are additionally iambic or trochaic, but the subject material is troubled. And the heavy use of monosyllabic phrases (the complete first line is monosyllabic, as are a number of others) creates a type of hammering, unembellished tone. Chosen by Victoria Chang

Love Letter to a Lifeless Physique

By Jake Skeets

on our backs in burr and sage
bottles jangle us awake
cirrhosis moon for eye

fists coughed up
we set ourselves on hearth

copy our cousins
did up in black smoke
pillar darkish in June

Drunktown rakes up the letters of their names
misplaced to bone
horses graze the place their stays are discovered

and also you kiss me to close me up
my breath bruise darkish within the deep

leaves substitute themselves with meadowlarks
cockshut in larkspur

ghosts rattle bottle darkish and white eyed
horses nonetheless hungry
there within the weeds

Victoria Chang’s fifth guide of poems, “Obit” (Copper Canyon Press, 2020), was named a New York Instances Notable E book and a Time Should-Learn. Her guide of nonfiction, “Pricey Reminiscence: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief,” was printed by Milkweed Editions in 2021. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches in Antioch College’s M.F.A. program. Jake Skeets is a Navajo Nation poet and the creator of “Eyes Bottle Darkish with a Mouthful of Flowers” (Milkweed Editions, 2019). He’s the recipient of the 2020 Whiting Award in Poetry, amongst different honors, and teaches at Diné School.