In an Abandoned Notebook:

Field guide to the new ecosystem
of my mind. Do not feed the haunted
ideas of my forefathers. Pay no fare
for ex lovers crossing dark water.
Abandon the hot-air balloon ride
before you leave the tree line.
Hope the martyr and the mentor
speak true as the hair on their faces.
Protect the endangered dreams,
they are the only children left.
These birds will lead you home.

-Jason Braun

Inarticulate

He lost something inside
her mouth. Directions to his bosses’
house. A letter he forgot to mail.
The way a t-shirt just laundered
smelled as he pulled it overhead.
All the conjugations of the word run
in Spanish. Where he last put an empty
cup of coffee down. The year
that Miles Davis went electric.
The name of the movie where the kids
woke up after sleeping in the footprint
of a dinosaur. Which airports
look the same and the different
subways it takes to get there.
Those lips, a man could shipwreck
against. He’s retracing his steps
to the plank. There the teeth gnashed
each other momentary then receded.

-Jason Braun

Discotheque

Satan takes them to a discotheque
in Spain. The ex-girlfriends come and go
talking about some guy named Angelo.
This is the part of the joke
where I woke up wondering,
who dragged me down past the bar
and stole my new handmade shoes.
Evil eyes, the faces aching in the echo
of the bass. Someone had filled
the room with owls. Like Tupac,
he’s always releasing new material.
I know all the songs of the woebegone.
I sing them into the birdcages of girls
go-going and, for once, feel at home.

-Jason Braun 

Paint by Number

Make sure you’ve got a clean
brush. I’ve already primed
the canvas and outlined
everything you need.
Now don’t forget to keep
a fresh, damp cloth nearby.
Some of you will see a ship
clearing the rocks, but still
about to tip. Others find Jesus
ghosted in light blue, the shape
shadows make, and covered
not in a shroud, but in numbers.
This is a one-handed, lonely
equivalent of a sing-along.
I’ve seen your earlier work:
ink spots cloaking Caesar’s
assassins. The Vermont boat-
house marked by a missing
set of oars and the birds circling.
Lies of omissions, are. You can
get this wholesale as a commodity,
like negative space or the rearranging
of a warm bed. Even the wine
I’m drinking tastes like it was made
yesterday from a full color photo
of an old man with a handful of grapes.

-Jason Braun 

Trespass

When I stopped his cold heart’s
beating, the tail continued writhing
fruitlessly. Half the length of a full
grown man, he could climb to the tree-
top without disturbing the songbirds
dancing on the bowing branches. How original:
me with seven pounds of wood at the end of a spade
after ten good shots. Which sins do we choose to call
cardinal? He knew the direction of the hollow
spot to enter my basement where the drywall
would rub a new skin out. This is better than sharing
dens with copperheads. Better too than being
caught raiding a bluebirds’ nest. I returned
his head and body together in a brown bag,
sent him home to the forest without
flattery, gladness, or prayer. One of us
is cursed, naked, and venomous.

-Jason Braun

Head Above Water Blues

Last year I earned fifty dollars
too much for earned income credit. 
Three fourths of day’s work put me 
over the poverty line, so says the taxman. 
This isn’t what getting over supposed 
to look like. Two grand would’ve 
came back to me if I just slept 
in when they called a substitute teacher. 
Those kids chasing Monarchs to the milk-
weed, counting the days of molting, 
crossing off each lifecycle—this easily worth 
almost any day in my life. That day didn’t
fill up my egg crate with yokes, or pay 
off the poor man’s thirst for the spirits,
the ones, and the zeros that wet bankers lips.

-Jason Braun 

The future of the book: is it in apps?.

Kevin Eagan giving Paradise Lost a shout out at his blog Critical Margins.

Contender

Black eyes were easy, 
it was the running and jumping
rope that kept me from being a contender. 
Breathless and stupid, holding myself up
after the local champ’s body shot 
stole every gasp in the room—the roundhouse
kick that turned my nose permanently to the left. 
For two weeks, I smiled brightly through the shiner
that tagged along. But put me on roadwork
and there better be cops and dogs
giving chase. Once I woke face
down on the canvas, outclassed by a much leaner
man, and realized this isn’t where you win fights.
Jumped to my feet as I remember, bobbing 
and weaving. But when I watched the tape,
before the ref stopped it, I was the perfect 
picture of a handful of leaves in gust of wind
just waiting to fall.

-Jason Braun 

Lesson on Gripping a Pencil

Told me to look around and see how does your neighbor
grip their pencil? What is the position of their thumb, 
index, and middle finger? No, this won’t do. 
All the small muscles in my hand went jellyfish. 
He cannot hold the tripod grip, I over heard
this and something about developmental and tissues. 
Sometimes I held it as a paintbrush, praying
to draw the words out to do my work. 
Then it became as an ice pick might, chipping 
away the recess hours in punishment at a desk. 
Thirty years later I hold this pencil like a small bird
I’ve entered in an agreement with and we get along fine.

-Jason Braun 

Missing My Exit at the On Ramp, a Meditation

For the old boards over the well that never
broke. For the stray pellet gun burst
that planted a spider web inside a window
to grow in the darkness. For the fist fights 
that didn’t end curbside, mute, and toothless. 
For my high school friend, Chuck,
running from the cops in his old pontiac 
lemans and the parents he beat to the grave.

-Jason Braun