Pratik's Fall 2020 Issue Highlight: American poet, Major Jackson's "You, Reader"

 MAJOR JACKSON

You, Reader

 

So often I dream of the secrets of satellites

and so often I want the moose to step

from the shadows and reveal his transgressions,

and so often I come to her body

as though she were Lookout Mountain,

but give me a farmer’s market to park my martyred masks

and I will name all the dirt roads that dead-end

at the cubist sculpture called My Infinity,

for I no longer light bonfires in the city of adulterers

and no longer smudge the cheeks of debutantes

hurriedly floating across the high fruit of night,

and yes, I know there is only one notable death in any small town

and that is the pig-farmer, but listen, at all times

the proud rivers mourn my absence, especially

when, like a full moon, you, reader, hidden behind a spray

of night-blooming, drift in and out of scattered clouds

above lighthouses producing their artificial calm,

just to sweep a chalk of light over distant waters.

 

Major Jackson is the author of five books of poetry, including the forthcoming volume The Absurd Man (Norton: 2020). A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is the poetry editor of Best American Poetry 2019. He serves as poetry editor of The Harvard Review.

 

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