YesYes
About the Author
Jonterri Gadson is Debra’s daughter. A Cave Canem fellow, she is a recent graduate of the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing MFA program and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. Her poetry has appeared in The Rumpus, Tidal Basin Review, Muzzle and other journals. She recently served as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, before being selected as the Herbert W. Martin Post-Graduate Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Dayton. She now lives and writes in Ohio with the Boy Wonder.
BACK
When a Boy Kisses Your Son
Remember you used to kiss girls,
how you played boyfriend
and girlfriend with no boys
just your hipless, day-of-the-week
panties pressed together in the top bunk
grining to shivering warmth,
how it shook you like morning's first stretch.
originally published in MUZZLE Magazine
BACK
Ode to a Microphone
This is about singing into a brush
with synthetic hair tangled in its bristles
in front of a spit-spotted mirror in a bathroom
where every song is your song and roaches
break-dance in slow motion when they’re caught
in the blink and the buzz of the dying
fluorescent light while your hand wriggles electric,
trying to brush, gargle, and rinse in the click
and the three second pause while the CD player
shuffles to the next disc. Do it all wet and nake
if this is about a broken broom stick, the handle
of a ratty mop, an unwrapped tampon, a remote control,
a black tennis shoe, an ink pen, a wire hanger, a dead light bulb,
a can of mousse, a freshly shaven bald head, my fist,
your fist, or anyone’s.
originally published in Diverse Voices Quarterly
Finding Idaho
Your first mistake is believing
every aerial photo of anywhere
shows the roll of sagebrush
over the singed desert valley—
symptoms of a slow-setting sun.
Eyes that never leave mother’s
windows believe they’ve found home
in the first cluster of roofs in a cul-de-sac,
believe they know each troubling pass—
how steep, how thin, how rocky,
where the road has no railing,
the exact spot where you learned to yield.
