Jed Myers Verse-Virtual 2017 January

January 2017

A Philadelphian who’s lived in Seattle more than half my life, I’m a psychiatrist with a therapy practice and I teach at the University of Washington. I was always wrapped up in poetry, but as of the events of 9/11/01, I dove wholeheartedly into poetry and the arts. My work has appeared in Prairie Schooner and Nimrod, and my book, Watching the Perseids, won the Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award. Please visit at http://www.jedmyers.com/ .

Prayer

I pray I’ll be reborn on a planet
where the weapons of war are guitars.

And for a little worm on my arm
to feed on my fulminant desires.

And for a vapor that inhaled will soften
the taut gut-strings of my fears.

Well, Shape of Things, can you hear
my prayer? It ripples out of this dark

apparatus my flesh, broadcast at a radius
that is your measure. Everywhere

with your no-center, are you receiving,
or do these messages get erased

unread off the blackboard of space? I’m afraid
we’re your little flash fictions of dread

and hope, all the witness there is
confined to the scope of this bonehead

hominid troupe. Looking out
on my street, the trees wavering

in a wind in the moonlight appear
to glisten, and I’ll take it

to indicate that you listen, to this
brief pattern of ionic shiver—

my prayer must make it somewhere,
and some few other atoms jitter.



The Wire Said

Held up behind a red in evening rain,
my FM station on, I heard a man
who’d left his house in rubble, crossed a plain
and then a sea, gone north without a plan,
now faced a razor wire fence—it met
horizon at both ends. The wire said
a vast estate of folk more fortunate
had spread this far, and that its forbears bled
a sea to claim it. Then a rush of surf
it seemed poured through the radio—a gust
blown here, I thought, across the bordered turf,
from where the nomad shifted in the dust.
His ragged English rode like froth on flood.
It floated through the wire, blood to blood.

Asylum

I’ll offer you passage toward asylum
through the canals of my ears—please come
now, straight from the radio station.
I don’t know who you’ll find here
who speaks your language. But already
my grandmother calls to you in her Yiddish
as she chops beets for our borscht.

Your face, gritty in front page ink—
I think you could hide if you had to
in any odd shadow. But quick—
under these mom-and-pop storefront awnings
my eyelids. Please, come back
behind the shop, where we live—yes,
the kitchen. The future ferments

here in our memories’ brine. We’ve pressed
fine slices of reddened smoked fish,
gift of the parted seas, upon bread
fresh-risen on the yeasts of the West.
And let us eat by the candles we’ve dipped
in the wax of our histories’ hives, our stories
a weave, the wool of our sheep

on our shoulders. Too many have died—
there are all kinds of sudden fire,
and all the sparks one fear—the other comes
seeking asylum, what we’ve secured
only a few breaths before, and what
shall we offer? Here, my grandfather’s chair,
and the shawl he brought across the water.

“Prayer” was first published in Licking River Review (2015).
“The Wire Said” was first published in McLellan Poetry Winners 2016.
“Asylum” was first published in Cultural Weekly (2016).

©2017 Jed Myers

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