By JD Scott
Listen to JD Scott read “That October”:
You wore white slacks and shoes in my bed,
jumped out the second story window
on a bad moon and broke both ankles.
My pubis was a deck of cards with all
the heart suits removed. Climbing
vines grew out my wrists like worry beads.
These are our conjunctions. A boy who comes
and goes as he pleases. An untimely Labor
Day joke. A parable, which starts now:
you will not be permitted my restless hands
which hold each other like the ouroboros,
that dragon who swallows himself forever.
I threw my phone in the ocean, built brick
walls around my bedroom. I saw a psychic
in an alley downtown; she wanted me
to tell you this: you will marry a woman
who warns her children of the dangers
of hair dryers, and I will give birth to wolves.
About the Author:
JD Scott is most recently the winner of the 2018 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize, selected by Lidia Yuknavitch, which will result in a debut short story collection published by &NOW Books. Recent and forthcoming publications include Best American Experimental Writing, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Salt Hill, Sonora Review, Ninth Letter, Spoon River Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Recent accolades include being awarded a 2018 Lambda Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellowship, attending the Poetry Foundation’s inaugural Poetry Incubator, and being awarded residencies at the Millay Colony and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. They are also the author of two poetry chapbooks. More about JD can be found at jdscott.com.