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Click title to download microchap
Cover: Diffused Door
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We Three
We are engaged & so
is the lock on the door--
all lips & fingers, gasps--
a giggle--
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
a pitter patter & a handle
jiggle later the 4 yr old
son knocks once more
& yells ARE YOU HAVING
SEX?
We let in the boy, where he claims
for himself the bed’s center, leaving
the two of us to scratch softly at our
shoulders with our fingers, eyes open;
the moonlight peeks
between the curtains
& we’re quiet, listening
to him breathe again.
An Account of Our Precipice
We three stare at each other--
it’s Reservoir Dogs: Burgeoning
Domestic Dispute Edition
Our mouths trained guns,
words chambered,
Hello translates directly to
Say something stupid
Another Hello says Let’s not do this
My wife’s smile says, Who the fuck is she?
It could be a veritable
massacre here at the zoo today;
stay tuned.
Previously published at ‘The Metaworker’
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The wrong Hall & Oates song
Imagine your wife dancing
during a wedding reception,
the folds of her dress curling over
themselves, a siren across
the room, tugging you into love with
her, again,
still.
Imagine she gestures you hither
with her narrow fingers, smiling,
hips rotating on ones & threes
along with the final moments
of September, so you go.
Imagine you reach her, that your
guilty fingers weave with hers,
that you place her hand on your chest,
sneak your free hand around
her waist & pull her into you.
Imagine your phone buzzes
inside your breast pocket. Imagine
your wife says Who’s that? & you reply,
pulling her closer, placing your lips
to the conch of her ear gently,
It doesn’t matter as the phone
buzzes again & again, between you.
Imagine the DJ screws the pooch
& plays She’s Gone & your wife laughs,
whispering, I love you.
Imagine this crushes your heart.
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Mercy, Gratitude
Out for a walk, I came across a pine marten,
leg-snared in a coyote trap, hungry & shrieking,
terrified to move.
It whimpered as I fiddled with the rusty
Gregerson fitting, fingers fat & cold.
The marten spun when the cable slid free
& it thanked me with a bite on the back
of my hand, opening me
up.
I stanched blood all the way to the hospital,
where they asked what’d happened. I lied
& said it was my dog,
who, laying on the kitchen rug,
would never care.
First appeared in ‘The Orchards Poetry Journal’
Holding on
I will hang onto you every night
like you are flying me across the sky
in a streak & I will close my eyes
to catch the feeling in my stomach--
the same one you get air-swimming.
In our waking hours, you place my head
in your lap while your fingers traverse
my growing forehead. If I close my eyes
I can see the lines in your palm, your knuckles’ creases, the shapes of your cuticles
& sometimes I’ll shake as if I’ve fallen
from a chair.
Every night, the music of our breaths
fills our room, & will
until we are no longer.
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Jason W. McGlone © 2022
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Jason W. McGlone's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Briefly Zine, Autofocus, Sledgehammer Lit, and Glint Literary Journal, among others. He edits the process-centered journal Zero Readers, makes music under the name Mourning Oars, and lives in Cincinnati with his family.