Poetry: i, ii, iii, iv, v by Jos Charles
These five beautiful little poems by Jos Charles prove the power of brevity. The succinct linework introduces delicate imagery with a voice that is distant, yet intimate, bare, yet bursting with bodies. Charles knows how to leverage space and silence in a poem, how to carve the reader’s eye and gift it back to them on a silver platter.
i.
How these workless days became
a fit Foam
the corner of my mouth
on a floor
Partita Thursday My heart
as big as it is Over
a toilette
forgetting that Bachmann
poem
you love Oh
Let’s swap our shirts
Let us hold a coconut
It is dusk
ii.
Flags asked
out Pride winds from the terrace
interview at six
interview at eight
a woman waiting unholds
your form
a man’s
bathroom I’m always in
empty summer
homes by the sea
iii.
To speak
is to speak of structures
A language
only capable of itself
It’s true the outside a kind
of organ The world
a body Your eye
on a platter
of silver and laurel The city
around us fallen
The same news
daily Great Troy has fallen
iv.
I wanted
to believe a corner a print leaned
to a corner can save
a people The revolution to each
stagnancy My romancing
and the condo on the block
seeming only
to place the enormous
limit of its form
There are questions
within the body
you forget Breaks
holding breaks in
the wall
v.
It is falling
ash in Santa Ana
Falling in
your year November
Needing Chagall’s
Christ irrecoverably
in the evening
holding hands our
selves into
the evening we
wept a quiet
English The day
contained it
Jos Charles
Jos Charles is a trans poet, writer, and intertextual artist whose debut collection, Safe Space (Ahsahta Press, 2016). They are the founding-editor of THEM, the first trans literary journal in the US, and engage in direct gender justice work with a variety of organizations and performers. Charles received their MFA from the University of Arizona in Tucson where they now reside. In 2016, Charles was a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
