LYNDALE AVENUE | JAC NELSON
Snow makes darkness cold.
, his lashes
clean , rippling... inaudible
I have to , my arm
merged to the form of me, nor do I remember
...there, at that very seam, his arm
still with scotch in tumblers.
A cherishing kiss, my hair warm with
warmed snow and yes, sparkling. Things.
We met at the CC Club on Lyndale,
...Ever . I remember
our hair and jewelling our long coats
snow, the dust he must have polished away
perfume . Year after year
he mentioned I was looking good,
little candies, .
...became mine. I used to like
giving my shoulders and hands to
, everyone
a cherishing kiss, like that of a fabled
interior.
that child unable to stop herself
seamed with garland and strings of lights. Things
are not broken.
, the dark inside.
In the morning there was coffee and my navy wool coat.
rooms...
I must have been wearing my wool coat, a
scythe, metal-hot, searing white, light beginning,
I asked around, Did you leave a coat
...scribbling ballpoint pens
...its wool sleeve, he kissed me,
the
light from bulbs
a tenderness for the ground sugary thing.
Before I arrived at his apartment, after
dark, of course, it was winter, .
Navy–––
, to a sidewalk,
inappropriate shoes for the weather but we
were there it seemed, how people flock
I remember a bench, a sidewalk,
my face wet and pink, snow
unsheathed from outerwear, laughing.
The dark makes it. I wore
everything navy .
and bottles of wine and high stools,
pulsing the seam
about music. It was night, light came
generations of night and day across
the Midwest city, his long gloved arm
to bring gifts to people. Or do I?
thick with snow, lights
my own body heat according to science.
The citrus glow of the citystreet lights
across my shoulder blades, his hand
When did the night begin? Was I warm
enough? Walking in snowfall across the grounds
sublimating (I say). My hair wet with
sickled moon, the moon a machete
I knew, and I liked hearing. Was I already tired
night and day, inch by inch
we’d talk about music, we’d never stop talking
a sofa for snow, a party, a grand opening,
brother or father, brother of someone, not mine.
Clearing throats in snow on Lyndale,
still snowing, I brought the smallest things,
of incandescent staged
around me, feeling – privately – like a girl.
Jac Nelson is a multimedia poet living between the lands of the Nisqually people (at Puget Sound) and of the Dakota people (at the Minnesota River). Their work begins with art and artist as ethical questions that emerge from inherited context: ancestry, language, land, trauma, coercion, and decision activate their aesthetic search for multigenerational healing and connection. Jac continues to learn about, engage with, and resist the ways they benefit from white supremacy originating in genocide, slavery, and other violences. Recent work is in Black Warrior Review, Fanzine, Blackbox Manifold, Otoliths, Old Pal, and soft surface. Gram them @jacxnelson.
Cover image by Zachary Schomburg: photos of walls in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, an area that is very flat. The horizon lines on theses walls mimic that flat horizon line on its landscape.
