Jeremy Radin

Jeremy Radin is a poet, actor, and teacher. He's appeared on several television shows including It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, CSI, ER, and Zoey 101, in films such as The Way Back, starring Ben Affleck and directed by Gavin O'Connor, Terrence Malick's The New World and Wrestlemaniac, and in many plays. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Crazyhorse, The Colorado Review, The Journal, and elsewhere. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Slow Dance with Sasquatch (Write Bloody Publishing) and Dear Sal (not a cult press). He lives in Los Angeles. Follow him @germyradin Source

day’s end

These days I work

the garden—pulling

up the old, turning

the soil for the new.

This keeps my ghost

in prosperity—a bright

exhaustion; bright yet

unsensational. Parsley

& tomatoes & peppers

to inquire into the silence

that inquires into me.

I imagine I’ll love people

again, eventually. But not

today—& not up close.

I’m learning how time,

its blank shimmer, plays

across my absence which

is not quite absence, not

anymore—it’s greener

than absence, closer to

ritual, a strategy against

the debasements. Ignored

by the goldfinch, I hum

to the dirt, requiring no

crumb of compensation.

Sunlight buries its body

in earth, compost sets

forth its gift of rotting,

from this rotting blooms

my emptiness. Nothing

to be but silent here, amid

the thirsty miracles. Why

continue making such

noise—no matter what

I say I'm saying hold me.

Published:

2021

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

Themes:

Faith & Hope

Joy & Praise

Love & Relationships

Nature

Poems of Place