THREE POEMS
by Jordan Charlton
THAT'S NOT WHO I AM
Even when my actions are mine,
they are not me, when I am white.
When I am white, I am always a man
and always right, as in correct. White
for so long meaning absolute, or solely observable.
In every room when I am my whitest
every person accepts me, looks me in the eyes,
tells me how well I speak, how my words
paint pictures like Picasso, like Monet, only
less Spanish, less French. Really, more like
Rockwell—oh how he painted so vividly
and imaginatively with broad strokes of freedom,
of simple life! The polite and unpolitical.
Like The Last Ear of Corn where a little boy,
his grandfather enjoy ears of corn at a table.
Simple virtues: eating at the table. When I am white,
I always make sure to say grace. Sometimes twice
thankful that, at my whitest, I am not me
even when my actions are.
I'M THINKING OF A DISTANCT FUTURE
Life is, in itself and forever, shipwreck.
- José Ortega y Gasset
And how on the first day,
black lay bare, uninhibited
over the unassuming face
of the earth in its youth
& it was beautiful.
It might take lifetimes
to tumble in that dark
again, like how planets
in foreign solar systems
dance to unfamiliar suns.
I believe our story is familiar
how we’ve made home of stardust
and space waste, how we survive
shipwrecked on this shore of tragedy.
I THINK I'M BECOMING A REGULAR TO THIS NEIGHBORHOOD
On most days, I find myself on these streets running,
although if I am being honest, I find myself walking
my way through this sweltering heat.
Ninety degrees is the song this week of summer sings
until one hundred will peak its head through the clouds.
Today, I am not fearful for my life. Today,
I return down this street as a cyclist. I ride
Kennedy Ave. on an old bike from a friend
moving to a place halfway across the country.
These streets are safe and quiet, which is also to say,
white and unassuming, which is also to say,
here, on Kennedy Ave. I stand out, am a visitor. Today,
I am not fearful for my life, although, halfway
through this neighborhood, my body wonders,
then worries. Across the country, my mother worries.
In the distance, as I see while I rest against my bike,
children throw pebbles into the sky,
trying to knock a wasp’s nest from the gutter
of their house—white painted stucco, a Gable roof.
Below the lip of the hill, a basement window visible
from this side of the street.
I watch, in some unfamiliar horror.
Their stones reach for the sky
then descend to the ground.
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Jordan Charlton was born in Florida. His writing has been published in The Adroit Journal, Quarter After Eight, Ruminate, West Branch and elsewhere. He is a Pushcart Prize and Best New Poets nominee and former Associate Editor in Nonfiction for Prairie Schooner currently editing his debut poetry collection Slow Kill, which has been accepted for publication with Finishing Line Press in the Fall of 2024.
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