Saeed Jones
Poet Saeed Jones was born in Memphis and raised in Lewisville, Texas. His poems engage themes of intimacy, race, and power, and often incorporate elements of mythology. Jones is the author of the memoir How We Fight for Our Lives (2019), which one the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. His debut poetry collection, Prelude to Bruise (2014), received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, which described the book as “a fever dream, something akin to magic.” Prelude to Bruise was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Jones earned a BA at Western Kentucky University and an MFA at Rutgers University-Newark. He has received a Pushcart Prize and has also been awarded fellowships from Cave Canem and Queer/Art/Mentorship. He is co-host of Buzzfeed’s AM to DM show, and he lives in New York City. Source
A Spell to Banish Grief
Only when you wake to a fistful of pulled hair
on the floor beside your bed and, from a glance,
can guess its weight, when you study dried tear
streaks on your cheeks like a farmer figuring out
where the season went wrong, when a friend calls
out your name three or four times before you know
your name is yours, when your name fits like clothes
you’ve suddenly outgrown, when there is too much
of you, too few of you, too you of you, and the mirrors
wish all of you would just look away, when the clocks
can’t feel their hands and the calendars begin to doubt
themselves, when you begin to agree with the glares
from mirrors but your reflection follows you around
the house anyway, when you catch yourself drunk
on memory, candles lit, eyes closed, your head tilted
in the direction of cemetery grass, yellow and balding
above what’s left of the body that birthed you, and you
try to remember the sound of laughter in her throat
and fail, only then, orphan, will I take all my selves
and leave.
Published:
2022
Length:
Regular
Literary Movements:
Confessionalism
Anthology Years:
2024
Themes:
Death & Loss
Literary Devices:
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Assonance
The repetition of similar vowel sounds that takes place in two or more words in proximity to each other within a line; usually refers to the repetition of internal vowel sounds in words that do not end the same.
Internal Rhyme
A rhyme involving a word in the middle of a line and another at the end of the line or in the middle of the next.
Interrupted Clause
a word group (a statement, question, or exclamation) that interrupts the flow of a sentence and is usually set off by commas, dashes, or parentheses
Personification
the attribution of human qualities to a non-human thing
Simile
a comparison between two unlike things using the words “like” or “as”