POEM
I’m a formless void
and also the source
of all knowledge and feeling
and I’m waiting for you to
enter and define me.
You’re a car part.
You’re a clock.
Wind bends to your will.
You say when
to all things.
Inside me, you become reality
folding in on itself.
I grow a face
when you look at me.
My lips bloom.
Don’t tell me what to say.
I’ll whisper your life to you.
FORM
I don’t need a job
I need money
Nobody understands the difference anymore
I went hungry as a child
My shoes worn down
to holes
through which
the earth became my mother
I don’t need a partner
I need love
I don’t need freedom
I need room
A room
small room
with walls to beat
and beat and beat and beat
against my working body
until I am free
VIBING
It’s January 2nd, it’s raining in LA.
I drive around listening to radio jazz.
Watch people run through street water.
I wave a man through a crosswalk
on his tiny little bike
and I head back to my new home.
My brand new life.
I play a youtube video of a reiki healer
to cleanse past lovers away.
Scald my body in a bath with the fire of years.
This is a different time, I am being
poured into violently,
my heart is bleeding purple light,
I am forgetting every grey, every old color.
I used to fall asleep thinking this is it,
all there is.
Always a loud crash below.
Always crashing.
Gone loose, I have.
This is life and it is falling on me hard.
WHY WE PRAY
Most people believe whatever feels good.
Sometimes believing in bad things feels good.
Sometimes believing in good things feels good.
Belief has more to do with incentive than with truth.
Truth is simply the idea of a perfect and unwavering
set of incentives.
There is a truth but it isn’t relevant in most cases
since most people have no incentive to believe in it.
Most people like being told what to do
but only for a certain period of time
after which they will beg to be told to do the opposite of
whatever it was they were asking to be told to do before.
The human mind is a shattered interface between
the body and the places it goes.
Thinking is a hazard.
Feeling is fatal.
Dreaming is where the things that matter get done.
Most people don’t remember their dreams very well.
Most people don’t even remember their own memories.
Everything is a new version of what it was before.
If you could trace a memory back as far as it could go,
through as many versions of itself that could be reconstructed
you’d find truth,
but this kind of reconciliation is ultimately impossible.
Time is all about loss,
and you can’t go back.
You can’t remember a thing.
You can only ask God in a dream what he means
and he might tell you with a whisper
that slips out and vanishes forever,
just as you wake up.
AUTHORITY
Sorry to hear that. Park far away and walk
with broken heels to the room where you will
be named. Complain about the process all
you want. There is a cop in the clouds, she is
singing beautifully and you love her.
What do you actually believe in, you ask
yourself. A siren is a sound and so is a death.
Step inside, there is a man with a coat who
tells you who you are. The lights inside are cops.
You want the answer to always be darkness.
You want God to feel sorry for you.
You want to be the only good cop in the world.
Jennifer Espinoza's works have been published in Poetry Magazine, PEN America, Lambda Literary, The Offing, Shabby Doll House, Electric Cereal, Voicemail Poems, and The Rumpus.
Follow Jennifer on substack - @jenespinoza