~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Philip Jason

Unexpected Love: Notes

My close friend confides in me that she feels

joy when she farts at the pompous

students during a yoga class.

Strangely, this makes me think about

the different forms of love. Love, the defeat

of the colossus. Love, the end of the universe

resting in a pouch on the side of the heart, etc.

My friend is wild about these forms of love,

which of course, just another form. Love,

the wildness of your friend as she rages

in the smallest way against a tyranny

smaller than the rage. Love, the act of rage

that brings unexpected joy to a friendship.

Love, the misdelivered parcel kept safe

by the lunatic who receives it…

I could go on and on like this.

The describing of love is an art form,

widely studied and elucidated on

by the practitioners of yoga. They say

innumerable ways exist to describe

the describing of love. One for each

of the times someone has found a new way

to love the strangers in their yoga class.

One for each of the different wilds secured

in a pouch on the side of my friend’s heart.

One for each heart that has ever opened

to something that does not belong to it,

for each creak of that opening heart. One for

each of the glorious days that joy

has been misdelivered into my hands,

the days when I see love rumbling

through everything. Love, the phantom

limb of every madness. Love, the salt

in the eye of evil. Love, the gorgeous

misdeed that hangs adoringly in the air.

The Flies Have Become Quite Troublesome

The past is a grave filled with me.

Death is the wings of the angel

who wears my body in this world.

I want to believe there is an escape.

I want to believe that if I choose

the right words, God will find them

and make a home there. But

God has chosen the words already.

My enormous wings will take me

to them when the time comes.

Till then, I wait, the fool inside

the angel, who could not see death

when I was a child, could not see it

even when I was a younger man.

Now it is present in all my memories.

Everyone I’ve ever known stands beside

a sighing river, washing their bones,

hanging the best ones up to dry. 

I grow old foolishly.

every step of life takes me farther

into the abyss, my bones

filled with outdated information

from my youth, my organs filled

with juvenile love letters written

on beautiful, handcrafted

pieces of paper. my memories

assail me with pitchforks, angry

because each of them,

before it was a memory,

was promised it would be the truth.

II.

the memories of stars, full and beautiful in the sky

(until I put them inside me to light some masturbation

fantasy),

are particularly ruthless. they aim eyeward, never

for the heart, riding memories of the wind, cloaked

in memories of my parents. they look like angels

rising from a fall, like leaves in autumn

sailing away from the earth, like

III.

Memories, I know, are always Godless,

always the opposite of love. they are

life that has been tranquilized by time.

but these memories. so so full of light.

the twinkle of their fury so visible as they

come for their vengeance. the howl,

the smell of burning coal,

my younger self strapped to a coffin before them,

raging toward me like a missile.

Philip Jason’s stories can be found in magazines such as Prairie Schooner, The Pinch, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, and J Journal; his poetry in Spillway, Lake Effect, Canary, and Summerset Review. He is a recipient of the Henfield Prize in Fiction. His first novel, Window Eyes, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. His first collection of poetry, I Don’t Understand Why It’s Crazy to Hear the Beautiful Songs of Nonexistent Birds, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.