Boy Explorer

He discovered the ancient
city the headmaster always
talked about. The fur
coats of the upright-
walking animals were covered
in a fine layer of blood.
Hiding by the wishing well,
sending an S.O.S. to the boys
camping nearby, they caught
his neck in their teeth.
The boy, alone in the make-
believe land of real savages,
tries to friend the birds,
tries to get a message out
a window no bigger than a fist.

-Jason Braun 

Bread Crumbs 

Anglers cannot be trusted,
the ones wading in the streams,
at least. Leaning into the current 
makes a man think he can stand
squarely and render judgment
upon the deer, the kingfishers,
not remembering those he left
at home. All the trains are out 
of sight now. The fish aren’t biting. 
The man hikes into higher ground,
running from his reflection
in the swamp. Alone he cries,
battered and looking for crumbs.

-Jason Braun 

The most beautiful girl

in town—is not. She moved

to Tanzania. Waking in a house

at the foot of Mt. Kilamanjaro

after hearing all the scratch and squawk

prehistoric birds nesting

on her roof could muster.

It’s hard to imagine this scene

without her singing and floating

off into the clouds, wireless.

“It’s not like it was in Niger,”

she writes to me, not mentioning

knives that carved the hard-won

stipend from her purse.

Strange to see her as the house-

mother for twelve college girls.

It’s Ramadan now and they all take

turns fasting with the one girl

who’s Muslim. But I pray

she doesn’t starve too long.

Back home a town still teeters

at the swing of her hips.  

-Jason Braun 

Revival

Willing and bound, it was love
like a man folding his knees
up in a sinking keg. Or at least 
that how it feels now that I’m rising, 
massaging the indentations, 
pushing blood back into the skin. 
I’m breathing in the brightness
and the earth beneath my feet—
well, at least I’m trying.

-Jason Braun 

Dance Dance Dance

Reading Murakami and half-assing
vodka gimlets in an old canteen,
I think everything will be alright, 
if I can remember enough Japanese 
to say: Excuse me sir, but where 
did you get that goat suit? 
Moving parts inside the moving 
parts, from here I go to Hawaii and back
home shoveling snow. Mysteries
don’t hide in a Maserati, money does. 
My friend the actor can’t stop
his ex-wife from eating his spleen 
after screwing. I understand this too
and shuffle on. If you look at bad news 
long enough, you’ll find the news ink
smudged and running with your name.

-Jason Braun 

Wars of One’s Own

Stealing manhole covers when the cruiser
pulled up, calling my name, like a nurse’s
aid. They clubbed me good and I thought
I saw a doctor. The cell wasn’t the kind
that makes photosynthesis but there were
some real fruits in there. I slept like a stone
growing another stone out of its head.
Joan of Arc wouldn’t put up with this shit.
But they had her on their microfilm,
too, that’s why she shaved her head and took
off to old Mexico. Boy, the banditos
will never see that coming. I tried
her a few times, enough to tire of the taste
of blood in my mouth. After that she taught
me to sell scraps and scavenge in the recesses
of the city’s guts. She said: Look where they don’t
and take what you need.

-Jason Braun

Thank You Note Cribbed from William Carlos Williams

-For Chad

This is just to say

buenos dias for helping

me get the ticket to Belize

City and telling me to stay

at Los Amigos Youth Hostel

in the island city of Flores,

Guatemala. This was the fountain

of youth Ponce de Leon

was looking for, not Florida.

Irrigator of dreams, this open air

café growing poems, along side

lizards, Aussies, eye-openings,

the Dutch kid DJ hanging

on top of chicken busses,

and the howler monkeys. The beer

was cold enough and the friends

were easy. One day, I’ll pay

you back with a red wheelbarrow

full of avocadoes, Quetzals, and songs.

-Jason Braun

At Woods Edge Hiding Out

For five nights now our hero

has been sleepless on account

of the poison ivy and the steroids

used to get it gone. He hunts

spiders that hide behind

portraits of his mother and the long-

lost dog. A doctor once told him

that fangs are full of bacteria.

The poison’s not the point.

Under the skin motes of half-eaten

insect carcasses collect, calling up

bad blood and fester. The white

walls of our hero’s house are stippled

and smeared where books, boots

made a death mask with eight legs.

-Jason Braun 

Bird Dead on the Mississippi Shore in St. Louis

I set out for the meeting with champagne

meant to celebrate something that happened

when I hadn’t been looking. Celebrate not sinking.

Dust off the bottle. These things I say aloud.

Meeting friends, I pass the bottle to the girl

with ice, salad, and a bag to put all this.

People living and working in tugboats

pass, still living like Huck Finn except

for their very fancy phones. We gather

at rivers edge to sit on stones and drifted

tree trunks. We pretend to fish and the fish

don’t notice. A log shifts under the girl’s foot,

revealing a dead bird. The flies scatter and we

scram into the house on the hill.

We feed the mosquitos without noticing,

we’ve been uncorked. 

-Jason Braun