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Jolie Smith

Here and in Other Worlds

A Poem by Jolie Smith


Here and in Other Worlds

1.

My girlfriend calls me a pus lover

when I show her the zit forming

under my lower lip. I bite it

to show her I love it, I love it.

I roll a sharp pencil in my fingers

to prove I love myself, I love when I am a boy.

I don’t tell her about the smoke

outside my window or the dead bird I poked

on the sidewalk last week. It’s best not to know

the birds are dying, it’s best not to know

that I wanted to steal the feather

off a dead raven and stick it in my pocket.

It’s best not to know that a kid just told me

we’re in between a Children’s Environmental Crisis,

Right between it, he said. And then took off

to his computer to play Minecraft with his friends. All his friends

sticking their cheeto fingers into thousands of worlds.


2.

A man is steering a baby through the pouring rain saying, No No No

There are rings forming beneath his breath. My back is carved in U shape, his curving

like an L. We’re both skating on our own existence. I don’t know his problems,

I know mine, which are hard to count because it’s like painting

a house with twelve rooms. Today I asked a man in the grocery store

where I could find chapstick and he walked me to the chopsticks.

I blush easily but this time I smiled thinking of those two words stacked

so nicely in our minds and how both things touch lips

eventually and that, in the end, two strangers laughed.


3.

The dirty city is dark now. Guitars lean in corners,

silhouettes hover over the garbage of yesterday.

I keep saying no when my roommate’s ask if I want to go out,

I type that into google. I don’t learn anything new

so I stick cold butter on a piece of bread

and think of my girlfriend’s brown curls. I left all my friends

to live near the mountains; I keep saying no when offered help,

I wonder if whiskey would help—shiny liquid in yellow mug, warmed- up

honey stirred into the whole golden lot. Michael loves it like that.

Skeptical bikers cross the street while men shout about nothing

I flinch when they say fuck yet it rolls off my tongue so well,

golden words flung into the alarming abyss,

under Mt. Hood, under the river skies of other days.


4.

Back on the East side it’s after midnight and the moon is round.

In Memphis, she is sleeping with rounds of tangerine,

mango & banana. My strands of pastel legs

hit the edge of the bed while people outside

scrape the pavement with their shoes and scream

Girl, you make the world go round! Can they see the moon?

The sweet sound of her curls in the pillow mewling for the mango,

the soft morning, the piles of clothes in fifty piles? The darkness is nice

if you play with it. Try! Push your fingers into the rivers of tar

running circles around our feet, our legs, the big cosmos

melting into the sound of now and other worlds.



Jolie Smith (she/they) is a writer, sister, friend, tsunami-footage watcher, mind wanderer, and, once in a while, a psychic. She isn’t great at math (other than algebra) but she can make bird calls using her hands and has generally okay balance. Most of all she loves people and their minds and will spend time vehemently invested in anything you show her--including (but not limited to) books, films, homemade comics, and self-produced music videos.

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