A Boy Acquires Language

In the open mouth of pregnant pause,
where wasps came and went and stung
when he finally looked through
a keyhole, or at that tower of stacked
magazines somebody else’s dad had.
Handed him seven words for fertilizer
before betting he couldn’t make a fist.
Here is the place of naming grown-up
drink and smoke. Remember, engineers
don’t know anything about trains.
This is the kind of thing you can shout
in a boat. All year he looked at Dick
and Jane’s book waiting for the sound
to come out.

-Jason Braun 

Ostinato

The same weasel I played
jazz with for four years,
came back trying to bump
me out of the saddle with this girl
at the Stagger Inn. Earlier,
he was ear-hustling in line
behind us, waiting to talk
of his newest band. After midnight,
a sense of scarcity can be smelled:
There’s not enough love to go
around or the idea that a record’s
no good by the time everybody’s laid
ears on it. Maybe I’m the one repeating
myself and jealous and drunk.
Either way it’s still the same three or four
low notes calling home from infinity.

-Jason Braun 

The Girl With the Mona Lisa T-Shirt

Might be the missing key 
to art appreciation. Cut 
out all the atmospheric 
landscape. Zoom in, raise
the contrast and screen-
print what’s left of the mystery
on an American girl’s chest.
Both are famous the world over.

-Jason Braun 

Bare Blub Swinging in Smoke on an Early Sunday Morning: 

What do you know about the evolution
of horses? How long since you held
a job or a woman? Where did you become
acquainted with the accused? 
What did the white rabbit
say to Alice in the beginning? 
How do the Baltimore drunks,
careening in the moonlight
measure time? Which way 
did Ahab go looking for Japan? 
Which lounge is the best for running
numbers? When did you seek counsel? 
This is true until it isn’t, right?

-Jason Braun 

Like Words Could Do This

“Language is not the same thing as honey or squids or cold winds; nor is it the same as thoughts or feelings or perceptions,” Sharon Crowley, Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students

On an overcast morning you called
me honey, brought coffee and poached
eggs. It was all an act and part of our game:
Lip to tooth to tongue and cuss.
Like the shower and under other waters
writing on each others’ bodies in squid ink.
Every cold wind was flowing
through Brooklyn that winter and I wasn’t
moving there anytime too soon.
A place isn’t anchored only with a name.
Otherwise, why would New York City
still shadow me.

-Jason Braun 

Detection

In this story, a boy in love
with detective fiction confronts
stovetop clues to his grandmother’s
new-found forgetfulness. He can’t
believe the woman who taught him
to read to be caught in time’s undertow.
Sherlocking through the basement
together, flashlight in hand,
no one knows which way to the fuse box.
Stormy nights like these he stops
reading and wonders, maybe the very same
thing as his grandmother does:
Where did my father go?
Who made this mess for me to clean up?
Why doesn’t Dr. Watson kick down the door?

-Jason Braun 

After Seeing Rossetti’s The Day-dream

The garden must have sprung
up around her dress
just this afternoon. She couldn’t
have climbed that far all swoony-
eyed with an open book and flower
in her good hand. She would’ve
snagged each barb on silk,
slingshotting one sandal at a time
down as her father cussed.
No, the garden’s still growing.
She grasps the branches like a horseless
set of reins. Rossetti’s distracted.
He tells her: I’ll give you ten thousand
shades of green to know his name.
The one that’s trapped below
your breath, below the beating.
The one owning the hum and click
of each of your lungs.

-Jason Braun 

Self Portrait as Still Life

The box fan in the window
whirls, but doesn’t disturb
the wren shuffling the deck
of leaves outside. Five book-
shelves cradling dust
mites and countless homes
for spiders. The roll top desk
grandfather left. What would
he have written on this yellow
legal pad—list of Louis L’Amour
books he remembered reading,
notes of where he might have left
some keepsake: keys to a small
boat, a kind set of hands to touch
a woman with. Now a photo
of a girl too beautiful to keep.
A hoarding of rubber chickens,
broken watches, notes on the word
fuselage, and tomorrows locked
in a collection of mason jars.

-Jason Braun

Seeing what Van Gogh Saw

At an August sunset
twenty students miss seeing
it. Also, the groundhog and fox-
scent. Even the raccoons
rattling the leaves. The professor
notes reactions in a moleskin. 
Stones thrown and insults arc
with authenticity. Almost 
lost in the trees, the last bit of sun. 
A boy leans into a girl’s ear:
This is what Van Gogh painted
before he committed suicide. 
The van’s engine and fog lights
call them back. She’s grape-vining
her legs around him. Someone
else picked up his backpack. 
He carries her and his sweat 
works on her like Novocain. 
Seeing a sunset is seeing the residue
of the terrain and trains 
you took to get here.

-Jason Braun 

Distribution

The newspaper boy. His skeem

that got this going. Our papers

disappeared every morning,

not long after they landed in the bush,

teetering on the lawn chair, or top

of my sedan. This is seven a.m.

Weeks later our mail started to turn

up missing. The box in the door—

gone. Then the starts to the next

house in the street. Still, on the last

day of the month he presents his bill.

He rings the bell. The milkman.

His skeem to smother the boy

in his own news ink.  

 -Jason Braun