spine poem
Jaye Chen
I coaxed a spine out of you
with promises to be muse
said we’ll go dancing,
shining eyes, come
home, boneyard
raves, eggs and
rough toast in
the morning
now, a sea
of coffee cups
and ticket stubs
litter the apartment.
And cubs of beasts we
took home from the club,
at night they wail, less we
go dancing again. And still
the hours pile on, sundowns,
watering the plants, how was
your day at work, heart — we
stow the bones in a glass shelf
in the middle of the house. Just a
pretty old spine, beginning to leak
It wants to be flung from the ceiling.
whenever we’re in the mood we’d wrestle for the spine
and you, wretch, scoring my back, cry my bones, mine
july 2024
Jaye Chen was born and raised in Suzhou, China. They won Yale University’s Sean T. Lannan Poetry Prize and the Jonathan Edwards College Creative Writing Prize for their long-form epic poem, Homily. Their poems have appeared in DIAGRAM, Babel Between Us, and no, dear, and are forthcoming at poets.org. They live in Brooklyn.