Prelude to Bruise

HE THINKS HE CAN LEAVE MEby leaving me,but even nowI walkburningthrough the empty streetsof his mind.

I really thought I had read other Saeed Jones poetry before, but I guess I was mistaken, as I didn't have any of his other books on my “Read” shelf. I love listening to him occasionally read poetry (his and others') on the podcast Vibe Check - he's got such a lovely voice for it.

That said, I think this collection might not have been for me? Not in that I didn't like it, but that it was not written with me (cishet white woman) as the target. I found it difficult to understand generally, though still beautiful.

I stole his tongue; now he can't say no.
His yes is mine to keep, mine to answer my own questions with like:Now that I've mined you, are you mine?
- from Secondhand (Smoke)

My absolute favorite from this collection is a longer-form story-poem, “History, According to Boy” about a boy growing into his teen and adult years, into his queerness, and the rage his father feels towards him in relation to it. Oh it's awful, violent but also lovely?? It makes me so sad that any child would grow up in an environment where his parents would rather have a dead child than a queer one, and that does not make any sense at all to me.

From that poem, about going to the shooting range with his father every week:
Boy was so busy concentrating, he only took one note: The black paper body shuddered, then offered up its throat.
“Here,” the body said.Boy made a perfect shot. Boy's father called over the other fathers to look at the perfect little hole in the black paper body.Boy made note of how many times his father looked at him and smiled. Three.

CW: homophobia, homophobic slurs