Poems by Jordan Osborne

Badlands

by Jordan Osborne

From Canary Fall 2020

Jordan Osborne lives nestled between the Front Range prairie and Long's Peak in Colorado.

i’ve never met badlands i didn’t love,
body a forest on fire—

where ravens tilt towards the sky only
to find themselves digging through

dumpsters for discarded bread.
forested body in the fire,

and there are feral kinds of incantations
making lanterns out of empty

blue air. empty blue
body like a forest on fire

and closeted—
shut like the ivory tusk that makes

a music box into sadness,
into a body on fire, a forest

that speaks in the dark.
those are crickets and they are crying.

and the badlands all blue
with spruces on fire—

a canyon that was born ragged
and awake from the bluelit river

regrets its red, its memory of blood
staining and burning its history of body.

the rock used to mumble its oaths
and now it screams.

and the badlands all blue with empty
night skies—i couldn’t love

the bobolink well enough when i first
heard its body heaving a song like fire

but i’ve forgotten the sound, now that it’s gone
and can’t imagine me without

© Jordan Osborne

the word for world

by Jordan Osborne

From Canary Winter 2020-21

in our carelessness we often are either

a dead doe on the edge of the highway

ribcage opened like a cut palm in offering 

or a soggy cardboard box crumpled &

often i suspect we are both considering

how we complain of the snow despite

praying as we sleep for it to cover

the world convert the world into another

sort of water & the word for world

is something like water something like

taking in coveting water & reaching 

the world is a word for water frozen water 

breaking off & into stilled saltwater

like eyes that no longer look back we do not 

know which is the cardboard box & 

which the crumpled doe we do not know 

a dead thing from a deadened thing or

where the snow comes from we

do not know the water

© Jordan Osborne

there is no homonym for disappearing, only

by Jordan Osborne

From Canary Summer 2020

     how flame from the campfire hits
cheekbone to frame a face no longer
yours when i can’t see your eyes      how
embers crackle and warp and grow
     how sparks catch      how sparks reach
and catch fallen leaves summer
dry leaves and brush only      how light
grows along the foothills like dawn’s rosy
only      how light the world becomes
under a thumb when all the water is gone
     how light a body without water
becomes and carries itself away      how light
the smoke is that chokes to death      how light the body
of a smothered possum in the underbrush
     how light and      how gray and
only      how light the humming
and wren who couldn’t fly faster the elk
with antlers snagged in parchment
aspen the dehydrated fox only and      how
light the idea of fire becomes when bruised smoke
chokes all the world dehydrated and only
     how light the heron on dry banks and the bear
without wild honey only      how light the pine
with needles on fire      how light and      how dry
the forest      how light from the campfire touches
your cheekbone frames your face
as a tender thing in the dark and i can tell
your eyes are open      how your eyes look
in the light the color of Venus rising to meet
the evening or the sickle of the moon and only
     how light our hands must be as we carry the bees
to a distant field only      how light the breeze through
the clover when there are no more orange
groves and clover will have to do only      how
light the bees lulled to sleep by white white
smoke

title borrowed with thanks from Aricka Foreman’s “Dream Coated in Fluoxetine,” encountered via Alison C. Rollin’s “Cento for Not Quite Love”

© Jordan Osborne