/kenneth jakubas

If they stop mythologizing stars,

I won’t have a question to hide behind. Point by point, dead inside a morning skyline the color of our body’s orbit

of pain, my son traces desire like a scope, a bed of blood to feed his brain. Some days an empty,

empty blue will begin covering the childhood he thinks into being every day. Above, the down of a pillow

makes a waning calendar breathe hard as a house. This is the time to think, and I won’t say it. Homes behind the trees

rest hard against a dancing line, America-bright with the fear of Other. The difference between his two fathers is the silence

between two loud songs.

The distance between his mother and I a gulf where once, it was storm. The minutes before

school in our car, that quiet with soft teeth, won’t always be one of the veils between this world & another.

It’s as terrifying as the sun is hot, one of them is. The other is the dark soul of a body who never says if.

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Kenneth Jakubas holds an MFA from Western Michigan University, and currently serves as the poetry editor for Third Coast Magazine. Kenneth’s work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Zone 3, Carousel, and Sundog Lit, among others. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife and son.