Jason Myers
Easter 2015
for Eamon Cheney, born April 25, 2015
for Eamon Cheney, born April 25, 2015
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
when sleep at last has come
on limbs that had run wild. - W.B. Yeats
As a mother names her child
when sleep at last has come
on limbs that had run wild. - W.B. Yeats
Your name’s Irish, & of that emerald isle
where I’ve not been & your soft flesh I’ve not
smelled I sing. There are two forces that style
a song: joy, & pain. May the former’s lot
be where you settle your sound. But if you
find a noise of ache & wrong afflicts your
ears, you’ll enter a long, rich company. Blue
the many notes that’ve been played before
from Dublin to Galway, Cork to Coleraine,
where strings & pipes, & Gaelic voices built
from the bricks of ruined lives a domain
of terrible beauty. That’s Yeats, who filled
his lines a hundred years ago with names
of men killed for wanting life. Not much has
changed. So much is different. So many claims
to our affection we can’t keep, such as
the names that bloom in the hothouse of our
heart: Garner, Brown, & Gray, men felled for
the color of their skin whose hopeful mothers
once called them by first or nicknames.
Into this fearful, quaking, flame-flecked place
you’ve come, a sweet reminder of our need
to name & bless, let water run down faces
joined with those who’ve gone, & sung, & bled
in Belfast, & Bangkok, & Baltimore
by the name of one who died & rose again
as flowers split winter’s loam to color
& conscript us. I write these lines in
love & awe, a witness to your sacred
collection of breath orchestral in bone.
The operatic wind God uses to flood
ravens with lament & jubilation
hums now in you as well, darling Eamon.
Cantaloupe
Hold the sweet skull
(wolf’s wheel) in your
mortal palm then
knife a fragrant
entry. Free the damp
nightblessed flesh,
lava loose around
those parenthetical
clauses (seeds) so many
ideas about the future
each a pentimento
of possibility, &
the past, spooling
& spooling itself inside
each delicious cave.
Jason Myers serves as poetry editor for The EcoTheo Review. A graduate of Bennington College, he received an MFA from NYU and an MDiv from Emory University. He became a licensed minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church (the home church of Martin Luther King) and is presently seeking ordination in the Episcopal Church. A National Poetry Series finalist, his work has been nominated for several Pushcarts and appeared in a number of journals, including Ecotone, Image, The Paris Review, and West Branch.
Return to May 2018 Edition
where I’ve not been & your soft flesh I’ve not
smelled I sing. There are two forces that style
a song: joy, & pain. May the former’s lot
be where you settle your sound. But if you
find a noise of ache & wrong afflicts your
ears, you’ll enter a long, rich company. Blue
the many notes that’ve been played before
from Dublin to Galway, Cork to Coleraine,
where strings & pipes, & Gaelic voices built
from the bricks of ruined lives a domain
of terrible beauty. That’s Yeats, who filled
his lines a hundred years ago with names
of men killed for wanting life. Not much has
changed. So much is different. So many claims
to our affection we can’t keep, such as
the names that bloom in the hothouse of our
heart: Garner, Brown, & Gray, men felled for
the color of their skin whose hopeful mothers
once called them by first or nicknames.
Into this fearful, quaking, flame-flecked place
you’ve come, a sweet reminder of our need
to name & bless, let water run down faces
joined with those who’ve gone, & sung, & bled
in Belfast, & Bangkok, & Baltimore
by the name of one who died & rose again
as flowers split winter’s loam to color
& conscript us. I write these lines in
love & awe, a witness to your sacred
collection of breath orchestral in bone.
The operatic wind God uses to flood
ravens with lament & jubilation
hums now in you as well, darling Eamon.
Cantaloupe
Hold the sweet skull
(wolf’s wheel) in your
mortal palm then
knife a fragrant
entry. Free the damp
nightblessed flesh,
lava loose around
those parenthetical
clauses (seeds) so many
ideas about the future
each a pentimento
of possibility, &
the past, spooling
& spooling itself inside
each delicious cave.
Jason Myers serves as poetry editor for The EcoTheo Review. A graduate of Bennington College, he received an MFA from NYU and an MDiv from Emory University. He became a licensed minister at Ebenezer Baptist Church (the home church of Martin Luther King) and is presently seeking ordination in the Episcopal Church. A National Poetry Series finalist, his work has been nominated for several Pushcarts and appeared in a number of journals, including Ecotone, Image, The Paris Review, and West Branch.
Return to May 2018 Edition