The Poetry of Gary Jackson

“He raises one arm and you can’t tell if he’s pointing or offering his hand. Your clothes catch fire—you imagine both of you walking away from this alive. The burning man cocks his head to one side as if he’s never stood in the middle of his own destruction. Then a blast of light explodes from his right temple. He collapses, dead. A group of men hover over your head before touching down and apologize: who knew he’d land so far away / we’re sorry we couldn’t get here sooner / everything’s fine.”—By Gary Jackson

Speculative Friction

By Claire Bateman

GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—1 April 2022—Born and brought up in Topeka, Kansas, Gary Jackson is the author of the poetry collections origin story (University of New Mexico Press, 2021) and Missing You, Metropolis (Graywolf Press, 2010), which received the 2009 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. He is also the co-editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair Publishing, 2021). His poems have appeared in numerous journals including Callaloo, The Sun, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Copper Nickel. The recipient of Cave Canem and Bread Loaf fellowships, he has also been published in Shattered: The Asian American Comics Anthology and was featured in the 2013 New American Poetry Series by the Poetry Society of America. He is an associate professor in English and creative writing at the College of Charleston where he is currently the Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing, teaches in the MFA program, and serves as the associate poetry editor at Crazyhorse. 

Sister

Made you into dream

again. Pulled
what I could

from memory, conjured
the rest, shaping image
into bone. You were

able-bodied, tall
& lean. Twenty-
five & single,
two shades lighter:

the Korean more pro-
nounced in your eyes
& skin. We are visiting
Mom’s for Christmas,
speeding west

on I-70, Oklahoma
City a string of light –
like tinsel – lining
the highway.
If we talked, it
would have been

about blood.
City lights flicker
across our bodies
like a broken projector,
the film reel

emptied
years ago. The radio
fades into silence,
we’ve lost the signal.

You tap
a simple beat
on the window

while I turn
the knob. I never heard

your voice.

        “Sister” first appeared in The Normal School.

서수유 

I was the first stone dropped
from our mother’s mouth,
the first daughter cast out
for what, she later joked,
was the wrong American.

It wasn’t her fault,
she didn’t know she had
given up her home
for a man that couldn’t
sit at Woolworth counters
in his own country.

So she imagined herself a sea
star, able to rend herself apart
and grow a new body
far from hibiscus and wild
sunflowers. And if the old

body still breathed
and washed dishes
and took phone calls
from women pregnant
with her husband’s children,

she would bless that body
luck

as she burned
every photo – made wishes
on every effigy
that never came true.

But you,
clever thief, stole some of us
away. Translated my name.
I’ll stay the girl holding

the baby – you & me
in black-&-white.

Know that water
is all that separates
blood. When she says
she didn’t want to
remember, lie
to her that it’s okay.

And don’t you ever forget
you were loved
on the bones of hard earth.
Sister,
believe me.

Telephone

I’m the last on the line, translating what the ex said
to the aunt said to my mother who said wasn’t he

happy? Didn’t he have a life in Colorado full
with children, a steady job? Wasn’t he just back in Kansas

visiting his mother? It’s true
that she found him in her basement. Stop.

This all feels cheap, unearned: being stuck in this fragile
thin language.

It’s the Kansas in me that brings it out
like an illness passed down. I vow to stay

distant. My grief turns slow
like the sway of legs. I just can’t let go.

Men on Fire

Everything leans towards cruelty: you and your friend walking from the local bakery full on beignets and coffee when a burning man falls from the sky and craters the street corner. You’re alive but rattled. Others are already bones licked clean from fire. The man is confused. It hurts to look at him covered in flame. You don’t want to kill him (but you could. you always could) so you hold out your hand, slowly walk towards him. He raises one arm and you can’t tell if he’s pointing or offering his hand. Your clothes catch fire—you imagine both of you walking away from this alive. The burning man cocks his head to one side as if he’s never stood in the middle of his own destruction. Then a blast of light explodes from his right temple. He collapses, dead. A group of men hover over your head before touching down and apologize: who knew he’d land so far away / we’re sorry we couldn’t get here sooner / everything’s fine. 

You’re watching tv in your own home

when the police arrive on your doorstep to inform you that your body is a dangerous weapon, and do you have a license for your body? You blink. They present you with handcuffs, which the arresting officer assures is a courtesy, so please be kind enough to avoid a scene. You remind them you’re standing in your own home, and didn’t you save their world once, several times over? They blink, don’t recall, which doesn’t surprise you: you’re invisible when well-behaved. You notice four officers with hands on holsters standing right outside. Your neighbors are on their porches watching everything go down. Please the arresting officer says, and it’s the plea that infuriates you. You try not to recall all the times someone like you has pleaded to someone like them, and what always follows in churches, streets, parks, pulled-over cars, the side of the road, your own neighborhood, your own home if any hero / any officer / any American deems it so.

Superhuman History Month

The young boy on stage sings Amazing Grace, each note turns into the scent of each person’s most heartbreaking memory: baked macaroni at the wake, pine and peppermint when you got the call on Christmas morning, orange peel and bourbon when you finally signed the papers. Everyone is crying and applauding. The judges’ table asks him the first question. Standing near the back of the crowd, your man calls him a glorified scratch-and-sniff. He’ll never make the cut. You punch him hard in the shoulder. Anytime one of you is on stage it should be an occasion for joy. But he’s not wrong, you both know it’s all for show: none of these contestants will advance. They’ve already decided who will win. They told you that morning. Still, the night sky is breezy and cool, full of stars you can just make out this far from the stage. Your teammate shows up with overpriced beers and asks what she missed. Nothing, your man says, but she can’t hear him over the boos and groans: a young man turns water into Hennessy and takes a drink. You hold out your cigarette for someone to take and close your eyes. Close the stars. The judges adjust the blank papers on their desk. She looks promising, your teammate says. You drink and watch the girl onstage bend down and lightly touch the cat’s head—transforming him into a dying fish—then a lumbering bear—then a hawk that takes flight and is off before anyone can applaud, before anyone realizes it’s not coming back.

To order copies of Claire Bateman’s books Scape or Coronology from Amazon, click on the book covers below.