Lucky Jefferson’s 365 Collection features works that transcend theme, style, and genre. Please enjoy the works selected.
FOUR LOKO CENTO BASS (PUT IT DOWN)
we backup vocalists
shake the asphalt
top flight harmonies
Snail Paths
We rose to the forest wishing us away, asking us to go back to...
Do you remember me,
I ask.
My words, dripping with fleeting hope, like honey from a baby’s chin.
the asian-american chew
for leave of soft
ignorance, and inescapable
rhythm
Garden Plot Eviction
We noticed how most of the plots looked like poodles, overheard gardeners compare the...
“I remember on the bus”
I remember on the bus there is a word for a feeling
The Man Who Talked to Trees
a century ago, father told me there was an old man who had the...
Crying at the Delaware Writer’s Retreat
Gaps between sounds deadened and dressed like a deer
one day from rot.
Growing Gills
My people be water people so long
they grew gills
my mama black
vaseline more high-top fade
more pomade pressed
The turtle widow
The wavelength of red.
The lineage of honeycrisp
Summer in the 90’s
Summer in the 90’s meant the word schizophrenia did not exist inside my mother
little accidents
the sand squishes up between
my toes like brown sugar
Love is a Fish
I remember that Halmoni was the first person to call me a bitch.
What Death Leaves
It is the aperture that we cling to,
an exit that implies a return.
self-portrait as time passing
i wish to be burnt alive
by what i love.
we wake up and make love
you laugh about buying
duck eggs from the farmstand
Last Rites
Billions of snakes
deep throating themselves into oblivion.
Those Coming From the Frost
Outside, that bright horizontal line cut the land in two. In his mind, Murrey...
Insurmountable
Mountains can block clouds, peak so high rain can’t climb them
Sorrel Soft Serve
fat red flowers, tomato toast
Misophonia, or How To Be Trans & Be Quiet
Imagine my gender
did not belong to the highest bidder.
Last Summer
she squints, pausing only to wipe the sheen from her black brow
On 17 February, 1999
she birthed me- her first son, laying in a cot under a leaking roof
lunar new year
my mouth is a boat
flooded with green tea
Saris by the Seaside
My mother matches her beauty mark with her kumkuma
The Day After Martin Luther King’s Assassination
A tearful Darlene asks, “Why do they hate us?”
Something Beautiful
ghosts know it like
they know my name
Can the manic me speak
do I take a rest as my mother once did she is an ocean,...
You do not have to walk on your knees
unless you have a toddler
in which case you do at least three times
Concertina
a big box of squeeze and buttons and squeaky noises
Triple Step
breathless beneath blue & purple
When I Think about Leaving
On the edge of town, all the telephone wires are humming with her tiny...
Colonel Mustard & the Dijon 5
and we swarm it like flies / windows
A Sippy Cup Laments
milk, streaming from my open lip
Down on Grafton St.
Step by step, the cobblestones
remind me to stay sober.
On Green Dolphin Street
fat,
burping tenor runs
where god is called the Name
during torah reading, we played lion king/
Sighing Places
Thick with dice
or loose with change
Memory From Somewhere
the breeze tasted like
a chain-link fence
When the old man at the grocery asks you what an avocado is
like a verdant archipelago
Fruit Waxing Poetic
The wavelength of red.
The lineage of honeycrisp
Maybe the Fruit
Matte Meyer lemon, dimple-skinned orange
Bulbous
Phantom Limb
The psychic tells me I’ve lived
many lives on many planets.
Choose Florida
cloistered landing in walled reserves
The Buses I’m On Are Always L a t e
the anxiety of moments
that chased us here
A Nice Boy
“What is the nature of your visit?” “Ve arr nut visiteeng. Ve arr...
The Caspia Flower
a raid on our tongue tips,
dipping in the honey taste of…
21 /with loneliness
She said: take your curse, digest your sorrow, own your misery
McKinney Falls
I love them, their blue stickish torsos and jaunty meanderings
The sky is plump
You will raise the spray to the sky, beloved, beautiful.
An attempt
I run from the wound causing
mayhem along the causeway of my mind
Marriage as of Late
a hole in the mattress
deep as I’d dug it
The Boogeyman
These wounds will bubble over
and grow, running in the streets
consuming. Everything.
Methodically
When body is considered landscape and maps are considered time, we can feel what...
Flip-Up Day
That year we learned. D’Nealian forms; the tinny reek of Salisbury steak, the scorched...
Green Room
I used to think a green room was where jealous people went
dear diary
her mother asked…
“does he smell arab?”
Drifting Deeper
We’ve been there
the silence of reeds
all around us
what to do with all the strawberries
The scientist felt a pronounced need for something whole that used to be green
Flintknapping
it is humans who nurture flowers with blade hands
Stone fruit
pitted, laying long like a twig. And I think of God, of all things
Chinese Cabbages
She was only skin and bone,
and could not even swallow rice porridge
Horsenden Hill
A crow breaks from the oak
canopy
living like a tree
can I too,
reach out,
and accept
all I need to live?
The Earth Called Back
I had an imaginary friend: a giraffe named Lulu.
The Foreign Husband’s First Family Reunion
His history is whispered, and all identify him for his complexion.
What Light Does
The oranges have gone a bit soft, the apples are delicately
This Way Or That
standing there – patiently – as if amused that the fire could spread this...
She will sing you to sleep
When you wake there are harsh syllables to grab at you, yell, threaten!
On Death and Living
it calmed me to have the bridge of my nose stroked gently with the...
Vegetable Archive
julienning my hands, trying to pickle nineteen-years-old among white malt and “what’s your major...
Where the Next Meal Is
What if her tribe erupts into legions that gorge upon my meager silk and...
Put me in the poem
suspended on a spider’s web
Before We Shipped Out
we were to write a code-word, something easy to remember
Writer’s Dilemma
save yourself, move
to the margins, just
leave the screen
Apocalyptic Fortune Cookie
Coughed up overnight And pressed pristinely back...
Majestic Metropolis
I don’t mind, sitting here, watching my younglings grow
Planted for Me
toes dipped in cool water,
my hair wisping in the breeze.
This is How It Begins Every Summer
crushed by squirrels running
after each other’s tails round and round
Vrbo Sends an Email with the Headline, “Vacation Homes for Two”
Thought I was an optimist but I just watched a video with myself and...
Confession
vigorous, the electric bulge beats
against the screen, wings intent
Perme-Funk
The sun is nice today. Soothing rays, raspy cartwheels whisker
Summer Bodies
We looked for ourselves in jazz clubs planted in unfinished basements
to be complete
to be completely honest, there are those days when i want to pour vodka...
[I’m leaving and never coming back]
The space between raindrops
Is where I reside
New Year’s Morning My Son Appears
suddenly, solid as a second chance,
asking me to unseal his sand art kit.
Battlefield
As I walk through a collective field of souls I wonder what there is...
Good morning
Isobel wakes up earlier than usual today. Still, under the blanket, she watches the...
Train Town
To their ears it’s a nuisance, but to mine, it’s a comfort
chinese new year was january 25th
it seems to be a fuzzy rat cycling with pizza to the street corner...
Unrepentant
So I shall arise
And return
To my mother’s house.
Unrepentant.
We Live in Photographs as Ghosts
elongated shadows on the periphery of sunset panoramas, anonymous
Ocean Surge Lust
every day break the sludge:
caffeine, wine, rapping
First Self Portrait: Water Color
A touch of yellow sets off the light on my forehead, where hair doesn’t...
Stones in a Glass House
Side by side we contemplate
Until, moldering unashamed,
We are carried away.
Hero’s Journey
Your first words, first steps trembling on uncertain ground become false teeth and a...
Ever is a Long Time
He struggled to compose himself,
while I watched. Some things
never change.
Skunk Eating Snake
how I twirl and slither skither and skatter in scented words of my own...
Want vs. need
Oh if I had succeeded if I had had my wish we never would...
The Intruder
Split me open til the alphabet soup spilled out
Father and Son
“Tell me, son, Are you afraid of the dark?” “No, But I am afraid...
Ode to a Latte
my mother bought me a latte in...
The Forgetting
Mouth wide, bloody and pleading, palms extended, my need is ugly and unrelenting.
Vietnam Hangover
I got the news today
My V.A. claim denied.
The Fading of Winter
The mint and spice scent
of my grandfather’s pipe tobacco,
once lost
My Dad Steps Out of a 1987 Chevy Cavalier
A purple dome descends upon our house as my dad steps out of his...
Vapor Gold
Burning bright, making heat, it makes sense now
Counterfeit Children
I got a landmine for my last birthday. She ordered me to plant it...
The Years Become a Blur
After retirement, the years become a blur
Sunset Poem
I still write about sunsets. Mundane as it is, the closest I have ever...
Speed Dating
Tell me who you are.
The Radiologist
I still remember the day I sat on a padded bench among other women
A Place Beyond Song
After we younglings in choir loft intone our last song, we close our hymnals…
For nothing
I cried for nothing last night.
Soft is hard
Soft is hard to come by.
Riding in a Poem
The poem is a hot-air balloon.
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