Thrush Poetry Journal
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Jessica Comola

Valentine

Let X stand for God. The one I love, let his name be God. And may we walk a wire taut with
black birds. Let the wire snap quick as a switchblade across the back of a field. Where he is 
angry, where he pulls out a child’s shoulder blade like a bit of grey chicken, let there be a brick 
on his tongue. Let him smear an X across his chest in mud lie breathless in a field. The one I 
love, let him be a hare stained pink in the fur. Let him hold still in the long-grass like a railroad 
crossing. Where there is a brick’s weight, let it be the scream of a red siren. If you will be my 
Valentine, I will stand naked in the highway and burn pink. A switchblade snaps like a child’s 
hairclip. Somewhere a hare screams with a human voice. The railroad crawls on all fours. My 
Valentine holds his cross crossways and the long-grass makes a mud of it. If mud were a tongue 
we would speak it where the street makes a God at the stoplight. A siren sings through these 
wires. If the railroad is an integer, let it be a single switchblade. For what he did to a child, let 
him scream like a stoplight. If I crawl on all fours, let me go crossways. Let X equal Y. The one I 
love, let his name be God. 




Jessica Comola's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Puritan Mag, ANTI-, Everyday Genius and HTML Giant, among others. 
She is  currently an MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi.




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