Michal ‘MJ’ Jones
Michal ‘MJ’ Jones is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet & parent in Oakland, CA. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Anomaly, Kissing Dynamite, Muzzle Magazine, and TriQuarterly Review. They have a debut full-length poetry collection HOOD VACATIONS from Black Lawrence Press, nominated for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry, and a chapbook, SOFT ARMOR, from Nomadic Press. Often addressing the troubling and haunting aspects of life, violence, and identity, MJ’s work blends the lyrical, documentary, and confessional modes. MJ serves as the Editor-In-Chief of Foglifter Press, a premier journal publishing trans and queer literature. They have received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Hurston/Wright Foundation, VONA/Voices, & Kearny Street Workshop. They received their MFA in Poetry from Mills College, where they received the distinguished Community Engagement Fellowship. Source
And Everything Nice
After Wanda Coleman
Before we warred
there was sweet.
We would sneak the stuff—
our saccharine secret—
somehow sure it made us sinners.
It started at four (or sometime before):
Slurping of Log Cabin syrup
right down from its cap,
brother & I howling. Passed it back and
forth on Saturday mornings. We’d
rocket across grasshopper’s green yard
until fuel burnt up & needed
re-stocking. We sweetened unnatural
places. Brown rice n chicken,
Kraft mac n cheese,
or guzzled it straight, no chaser,
let grains dissolve in
gluttonous caverns.
Stirred six cups into Kool-Aid pitchers.
Before-during-after we learned
of bitterness, of absence,
we slammed sugar unsupervised.
Knew nothing of what
too much could do to our
insatiable bodies. Knew nothing
of restraint. Knew nothing of life’s
undoing. But we knew enough
to keep this secret sacred &
beneath the kitchen table.
Published:
2020
Length:
Regular
Literary Movements:
Contemporary
Anthology Years:
2025
Themes:
Childhood & Coming of Age
Family
Food
Joy & Praise
Memory & The Past
Literary Devices:
After Poems
A poem where the form, theme, subject, style, or line(s) is inspired by the work another poet.
Alliteration
the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession
Anaphora
a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences
Couplets
two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit
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.
Onomatopoeia
A word that, when spoken aloud, has a sound that is associated with the thing or action being named.
Slant Rhyme
A rhyme where the words have similar sounds in their stressed syllables.
Varied Punctuation
diverse use of punctuation.