Poetry by
Jason McCall
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Silver
Fingerprints on my ceiling and I’m thinking
about God, Spider-Man, and all the other men
I’ve looked up to at some point. Every boy needs
heroes, and I found mine in Hector, Wile E.
Coyote, the 1990-1993 Buffalo Bills, and Job
before he got everything back.
You could say that I was a sucker
for second-place. That’s why I used to lose
games to my brother on purpose
and chase girls who I thought were too fast
for me. I messed up and caught a few
and didn’t know what to do.
I worship gods who are one
step away from the pantheon.
My dreams loiter around the gates
of heaven, but never bother to knock.
I don’t like mountaintops and planes
make me nervous. So much
promise on the way up; too much
certainty on the way down.
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Summer
Breathing hard, jogging through the old neighborhood,
my lungs and knees swear to me that the sidewalks
are longer than they were back in ’95. Spray paint
on the pavement reads “I kill you,” and my mind goes
back to my third grade English teacher Mrs. King;
she was one of my first crushes. I saw her
and her husband in the mall one winter and
was a little bit jealous. I was eleven.
Slowly and steadily I’m passing the houses of friends
that moved away and their names have moved
with them, out of sight and out of my mind.
Where was my first fistfight? What year was it
when I walked home from school in the snow?
I finally pass a house I do remember. My second
poem was about the girl who used to live
in that house. I’m still too much of a pussy
to ring the doorbell; I blame it on being
sweaty this time. An old man down the street
calls me sir and for the first time ever
this place does not feel like home.
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Disconnect
Hey, Muse, it’s…me. I was just calling
because we haven’t talked in awhile and I wanted
to make sure everything was fine between us.
I know not to expect much out of you;
I know that you’re not the commitment type,
but I hope I didn’t do anything to make you grow
silent and not return my calls.
Did the Mother Muse put her finger over your mouth
and tell you not to talk to boys like me?
Do the other Muses inspire rumors about what you
and I did on those nights you slept over?
Do they write dirty notes in the girls’ bathroom that say
things like “For a good time, call Jason’s Muse. xxx-xxxx”
Do they accuse you of being a loose Muse?
I hope I didn’t ruin your reputation,
and I hope that you’re not ashamed
when you have to admit that you used to be
my muse. I know better than to imagine
what gods do, but I would rather picture
that you were forced or shamed into abandoning
me rather than you sitting happily on some other man’s
shoulder, whispering secrets that you promised
were for my ears only.
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Prism
White-hot stars fall inward and leave
behind black holes as tombstones.
White = the absence of color = Black =
the combination of all colors = White…
so much for absolutes. I don’t want
to believe that everything is relative
and relational and not quite real.
Fuck the philosophy; the ambulance
rides and piss tests in November
were more than shadows
on a cave wall. I wish I could blame
those days on an abstract representation of me,
but I was there. Maybe Plato and I
can wrestle over it in the next life.
Beneath the shadows and ether,
there is a tangible world. I touch things
and things touch me. I know this
when I tap my niece on the nose
and she laughs or when I feel my mother
say “I just called to hear your voice.”
Let the vultures and the sophists
gnaw on the ends of the spectrum;
I just want the colors.
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To Fade
I have a hard time finding my birthmark
these days. I might be getting darker,
the mark just might be getting lighter.
but in some small way that has nothing
to do with the science of skin, I feel
like I am losing some part of myself.
It looks like a pork chop or South America,
depending on my appetite. I have other marks,
like the scar on my knee that I got when I fell
down a ramp ten minutes before a poetry reading
my junior year. I was a little drunk
and a little bloody, and the chips
and cookies I brought for the reading spilled.
The professor gave me a Spider-man band-aid
and let me read. I spent the rest of year
on behavioral probation. I don’t have many
stories about my birthmark, but I hope
I still like pork chops when it’s gone.
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Jason Mccall was born in Alabama and is currently a member of the MFA program at the University of Miami. He likes professional wrestling, dead gods, and comic books. Therefore, his poetry often deals with professional wrestling, dead gods, and comic books. His work has appeared in Fickle Muses and Marr's Field Journal.
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