Tuesday poem #249 : Jake Syersak : from Though, Through, Thoroughly

 “Shit-faced on grass blades, I have dived like a traitor”

-Stéphane Mallarmé

It’s just as well that wading this meadow, though, would be so prone to through: that is, it wasn’t until I’d planted an herb garden & filed for unemployment that I felt truly American, truly Arcadian, though: displaced through idyll, by flowers, Arcadian; through capital, by idol, American: thoroughly a marvel, how these dollar signs twine quickly the insignias of infinity like the boutonnière Eros is, snout in its slop-bucket: though how these skeletal flowers swap marrow for narrow escape, I’m amazed at thinking through (thoroughly, though?): the remains of what’s amazing remains a single cow in a single field surrounded by single lines of rain licking a single dewdrop on a single lilac through the rubbery abstract of four stomachs: through background, foreground drinks itself to death: though, regardless, tomorrow, I will spend the day misquoting Bashō to any friend who listens, the act of which will expose this weather of mine, of I, to its bone: thoroughly into, not onto, though: like a wandering moon writes its room around us, maroons us, through us, wantonly, thoroughly.

Jake Syersak received his MFA from the University of Arizona and is currently a PhD student in English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia. He is the author of Yield Architecture (forthcoming, Burnside Books 2018) and several chapbooks, including These Ghosts / This Compost: An Aubadeclogue (above/ground press 2017) and Impressions in the Language of a Lantern’s Wick (Ghost Proposal 2016). His poems have appeared in Black Warrior Review, Colorado Review, Verse Daily, Omniverse, and elsewhere. He edits Cloud Rodeo and serves as a contributing editor for Letter Machine Editions.

The Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan