4 poems
from Heaven is a Gateway Drug
Dead Honey
Death is large. The honey falls into the honey,
bright glass maggots catching light
This first draft of doomsday
is reassuring, the undesirable wow muted
if death is honey going home to honey
The technical and yellow daffodil became devoid as acid
I see according to that temperature under the senses
To be midwifed by bees into silence
would be sweet after the sense had faded
Lush Livelihoods
Is it warm like a moth?
likerous liflode her lykam to plese
I am only interested in documentaries and allegories,
lush livelihoods pressed together
An allegory is two documentaries played at once,
one of which is invisible,
lush livelihoods
The soil is sour with clouds
Now for the skeleton review
Get out the vote, yes, but possibly more
importantly, get out the bullet
which is warm like a moth
like a mouth
like a mother
1-7-23
Eucalyptic thoughts lead me to sleep
Cutting grass for the sheep for the winter
I convulse down the mountain
in someone’s younger arms
Your fox spiral loves you
The apple sauce dance continues
1-7-23
Spare the horses by the sea
The defensive sparkle of gummosis on the peach tree
at its base two years ago
glitters the memory
The glitter has dried out and fallen off
The tree survived
Smell the sharp mustard flower
in the winter garden
In the dark
Yellow hinting smell
In dark
Yellow scenting
In dark
My mentholated heart tingles out into your limbs
The mustard blossoms secrete melatonin in the winter garden
with no relationship to sleep
Cherry Week
Peach petals fallen
near the wild iris,
cherry week is over
already
The Japanese magnolia has started to bruise brown
Defunct docks drop themselves into the estuary
The stoney smack of the turtle
jumps back in
Horse toes don’t live in water
It’s a beautiful day, I want to snuffle it up
The orange beach made of blasted scrap metal
looks up to the bridge on the bay
She pulls at her skin
like an uncomfortable shirt
The bubbles like pearls I’m forgetting
before
the peach’s pink screen peeling with season
Film of your life is like living without any obligations,
without any nerve endings -
I don’t panic over her mouth this time around
I would lie in windy beds on afternoons
A mold piles like soot on sprigs of beech
We meet them where the forest goes
I hoard these images from a sickness at time
Jackson Wills earned an MFA from Iowa and a PhD from UNLV. Early versions of these poems and all work in the collection first appeared as video poems in Instagram posts; they are documentary poems of his life. If you would like to see more initial poems before they are remediated to the page and separated from their first images, follow him at jacksons_username.