Jesse Glass

Propositions & Commentary


A. Propositions:

I walk to the other day and I wait

For the Archons to answer. You send me a card

With four seed packets stapled to it. It


Is the hour of u,n,d,e,r,s,t,o,o,d. Still we

Do notice the changes, subtle as they are—yes:

“All the [ ]nges of [ ] pheno [ ] world.”

As you’d once, famously, described it.


Shadows thrown by rain- swollen spokes roll

Through us, are not us. Any miraculous radiance

We could catch in our bones


would linger with us now if it existed (It

doesn’t ). We agree to be more

than those signaling in the street, to transform ourselves, to

translate our cries of defiance into higher


registers. But do not believe what’s written

by this hand: this is a world of ill-defined

interiors, tin-work skies. I [we] pull bare shoulders back


before an age-dappled mirror: & remind myself [ourselves]:

those were your words

written in cursive flames? Your cursive scars? It is only because I [we]


care that I [we] repeat them—rather imagine these

press-on letters. It is only because X because N

because Q that I [we] came from the Aeons to be canted


along the front rooms of an abandoned farm house

(the scene of a continuous murder—note the handprints

bleeding on the wall)

that I [we] might speak

of the original, song-torn mouth and of

the streak of a,n,o,m,a,l,o,u,s,

light on a photograph that was said to have

flummoxed the aging Houdini (It didn’t);

or a tongue with an arched tip: sign of genetic fortune.



B. Commentary

heat drags at the outlines
of our bodies as we fall

toward each other. cantering
in slow motion, heads unhelmeted, we

pull at the glowing reins. heat
is another presence in our skins,

causes our pores to weep, then
welter in red seas. & always

the anger latent in these bricked-in
humors, the body’s edifices

quivering like the flesh around a superannuated eye.
this weight I lift is my personal regard

for you. at 10:45 P.M. it begins to rain
on a dying horse, steam

rolling back from its skull like a blanket
of lace.




Jesse Glass has lived and worked for over 20 years in Japan.