JAE JAE

The nicest, subtle things-
The tiny flutter of
Just the Right Cold
flipping up
...

The Fall of Man.

We study the Holocaust at school.
“The Catastrophe, ”
...

across this table
quivering light-streaked lines, some straight, some long, all crooked and dazzling against the man-made lake beside us
course through our conversation.
...

I paint my way in black in white,
ominously blind
as you sleep on into a viscous, lulling night—your hair
crammed neatly between my fingers,
...

People who have a limited body of information
can be sure about things.

I have
...

Ten years the largeness of your heart that couldn’t
Quit till it was done defining you,
Delighting us in your
Candid camel faces, your
...

Dissociation.

This conversation
teeters on the tight rope between denial
...

</>White-out words in their skins that my
teeth still hold in
spill reckless out over three dreams
of a scene painted in studies,
...

the sun in galveston.

Glaring back at me, the sun so
white-hot it turns the thick black lenses
...

White Noise.

The stage slung low and light
so strumming sounds can breed; at night,
...

any other time I’m
spinning longside forward,
wishing hard times would bend toward better ones ahead; flying
fast to the veiled end or
...

twisted like a ribbon, my mind
assessing my living
space
and tumbling into faces, lit red in the sun—reflections
...

Gleaming pearls of a premeditated version of the past
tumble forth,
forgetting the ears that hear the taint of truth beneath
the shine,
...

i thought i’d seen it all before;
there is a moment when i’m
slipping and you’re kissing
the part between my hair, sore
...

She wakes to hear his whining in the early morning,
calling like fallen angels to gods, they
break from a sleep I couldn’t know, where
lights twinkle off and become flickers, flinching in pale
...

The ghost, five foot eleven, draped in
olive and khaki creases,
eyes bloodshot and yellowing,
but his face alive with a
...

I don’t know
what the last days felt like,
how many plates of chicken spaghetti
you had to turn down;
...

The easy glide of toes along
the soft, flaked bottoms of my feet,
a vacation from the smell of cleaning fluid
and people who talk to colleagues
...

You will be walking down the
Concrete steps, crumbling over a hill,
Matching each remnant,
Each rock and pebble
...

most people keep their bones on the inside,
twisted up tightly
like the decaying, corked wine
we let sit on the counter for months.
...