in parentheses

Jarett Greenstein is a graduate of Michigan State University, where he studied Professional and Public Writing and English with a concentration in creative writing. He has worked for publications such as The Red Cedar Review and The Current and received the Jim Cash Award for Outstanding Senior in Creative Writing.

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What if?

But what if the Romans took
the Greeks in full and there
was no Romance? Or if
every leader since took not
themselves for Alexander?
What if in leisure we saw the slaves?
And realized whatever makes
one great is Now? 

The groove

There must have been a groove made
some time before. And when I
slouched out, my body fell in
and, by de-facto, me.
Flux is tempered always by names
and words. So that my name
only feels like a taunt,
on a good day. On a bad one,
your calling feels like a yanking
on a chain. You bludgeon me
with your love, and I almost
wish you’d hate me because
maybe then you’d fucking listen.

It is a stream

It is a stream, and it goes down the mountain.
It descends unseen until its form is clear
and you see you are headed downstream.

It flows and fills the lowest reservoirs first,
as if it is lazy, or the gravity
is simply strongest there.

Or maybe those are roots and not rivers,
and what felt like vacillation was design
and now the ground is kept together by that youth.

The Seasons

There is a hardening
in the fall, the donning of
a coat before a storm unseen
by any forecast. It’s only in
the years that the pattern appears.
And before the hardening
is a pruning, a pruning
all the way down, until
the late summer touches only
nakedness, only bareness,
barrenness all the way down.
Then there is the hardening,
a diamond coat that guards nothing.
It must be clear and clean and
cut and invisible so that it may
hide in the heart of winter,
on the giant’s back. Angled
so that the wind doesn’t catch.
Angled as the snowflakes
it melts with in the spring,
leaving nothing but air. That warm
summer air held on to in the
making through, in the
making through to spring, for the
making through to summer,
heavy again with the annuals. 

The pane!

Fingers press against glass.
The pane of all panes
now lies in our hands.
Everybody a mime,
imprisoned by nothing
but that bit of wall
we took for a room,
that has somehow become
the world.
Somebody write me a letter
and give me something
to hold on to.

Skin

Skin, you pretty me up too much.
I want to take you off
so that I can show them
the face beneath the face.
I want to scrape the muscles off
so that I can show them
my silly skeleton.
Let’s start the conversation
with a tilting of our scalps,
if we could,
and let’s chatter our teeth
and be grateful for the noise.
Don’t shake my hand,
let’s hit funny bones.
Strew in some winces
and some flinches and
laugh gutturally at
my millisecond mirroring
and I promise to do the same.
Don’t let go of the scaffolding.

untitled

Dear God,
give me the will to think after the thought.

Learning and Writing

Learning and writing
about what I am learning.
Writing and learning
about what I am writing.
Learning because I write.
Writing because I learn.
Writing about writing.
Learning about learning.
Learning about writing.
Writing about learning.

The cycle lifts me up
and sets me down again,
and I ride the cycle.
This ride so separate
from me and yet so—
apt.

It is in my hands
that it is out
of my hands,
because if I were
to measure it,
by looking down
or squeezing
to the point
of register, I
might really learn
how hollow
a frame
this cycle
of mine
has.

I wrote today.

They pool in me

They pool in me,
the side-eyed glance,
the joking comment,
the sentences
that get lost
in the “Turn here,”
in the “What?”

They pool in me
until I walk to
the beat of a
different drum.
Until all I see
is incongruity. 

They pool in me
until I become it.
Until I get snappy,
just to try and
understand.

They pool in me
because they
are home in
me, and I try
to understand,
but I was lost
some time ago
to those crawling
things I birth.

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