Jenifer Park
Inscriptions
for Jake Adam York

Dear Jake,

An inarticulate blue lingers.

I woke up & got dressed.

I fell asleep enough.

The accident of

a building collapsing in a spasm.

The miracle of a tree

folding in half.

Dear Jake,

Adam, the first man & all

in the genesis of words, all

in the air we make together.

I thought it’d be your writing

that would kill you, abridged

& spinning towards an emptied,

bruised history.

Dear Jake,

I knew this: circling a bridge

disappeared, watching reels

of questions, food too familiar,

a postcard of trilling fires, & finding each

piece of the broken mirror—your

reflection slightly & never the same.

Dear Jake,

In the gesture of your heavy pen,

a bar line splitting our measures,

the treble & the bass met. You taught

me how to forage

& conduct a silence

that will remain a word.

Dear Jake,

I’m scraping

the inside.

This is all

inadequate.

Dear Jake,

The warm Railyard Ale,

the bitter

fermentation

harvested.

Each moment I remember

is evidence

for the spine

& binding.

You weave

between our teeth.

You alight

from our speech.

Dear Jake,

& still

the risk

of forgetting.

The clock chatters

what is still

able to materialize. Still,

always a wretched,

mocking blue.

Dear Jake,

The library

behind your eyes.

The gravity

turning the pages. You,

in constant

exhumation.

For some time,

there was no language, only

echoes of a tide.

Between

each wave

that reached the shore—

Dear Jake,

In what proximity I muster,

always a distance.

In that distance,

a lobotomy.

The map

swept.

Dear Jake,

The atlantes you chiseled,

rising without dust

to bear

our receding sky—