"Letting the Emptiness Become My Government" by Marcus Jackson

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend March 27, 2019   Letting the Emptiness Become My Government   Marcus Jackson

Within me, the sipped, iced bourbon enacts the sense of a slow, April rain blurring and nurturing a landscape. Decades I've been pipe-dreaming of finding a life as concise as a wartime telegram. Ultimately, I've ended up compiling an archive of miscommunication and the faded receipts of secondary disgraces. In third grade, a friend's uncle stole the two dollars from my pocket as I slept on their couch, and later he must've hurried into the night toward a flat in the nearby building where a newly minted narcotic promised to evict the misgivings from all riled souls. I told no one of the theft, letting the emptiness become my government, my friend's mother counting her food stamps while we walked the late-morning blocks to a bustling grocery, within which she eventually smacked the hopeful face of my friend as he reached again for too costly a thing.            Copyright © 2019 by Marcus Jackson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 27, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "I began drafting this poem wanting to somehow get the word 'government' into the text without allowing any particulars of the current-day political turmoil to be named. What ended up happening during the writing process was the surfacing of memories involving the poverty and drug addiction that the Reagan era fostered." —Marcus Jackson   Marcus Jackson is the author of two books of poems, including Pardon My Heart (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books, 2018). He teaches in the MFA programs at Ohio State and Queens University of Charlotte. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. Poetry by Jackson   Pardon My Heart (Northwestern University Press/TriQuarterly Books, 2018) "crack house" by Quraysh Ali Lansana "OBIT [Caretakers]" by Victoria Chang "Shahid Reads His Own Palm" by Reginald Dwayne Betts March Guest Editor: Maggie Smith   Thanks to Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017), who curated Poem-a-Day for this month's weekdays. Read a Q&A with Smith about her curatorial approach this month and find out more about our guest editors for the year. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038

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