Dialectics

1 Minute Read Time

A perspective image of someone holding a glass jar up to the sun during a sunset, making it look as though the sun is contained in the jar.

I wish you could trap sound 

in a jar / you can’t.

*

It’s not my number one wish

/ it’s up there.

*

A noise dies / an echo 

stinks the corpse.

*

The air clears / not

if the meat was a voice.

*

A voice clings to the bone / usually 

the wrong bone.

*

It’s not the words I’m afraid 

I’ll forget / the pauses for breath.

*

I forgot to thaw

the meat / it’s too late not to eat.

*

It’s not that your voice is the meal / it’s the meal 

that has maggots.

*

Frozen maggots.

*

They’re stupid / they’re hungry.

*

I’m not hungry

/ I’m listening.

*

I don’t know what you want from me / I know what I want you to.

*

I won’t fit in a jar / it’s up there.

It’s definitely up there.

Jaz Sufi

(she/hers) is a mixed race Iranian-American poet and arts educator. Her work has been published or is upcoming in the Adroit Journal, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Muzzle, and elsewhere. She is a National Poetry Slam finalist and has received fellowships from Kundiman, the Watering Hole, and New York University, where she received her MFA. She lives between the Bay Area and Brooklyn with her dog, Apollo.

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