Jax NTP

December 2019

Jax NTP holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CSU Long Beach. They currently teach critical thinking, literature, and composition at Golden West College, Irvine Valley College, and Cypress College. They edit poetry and fiction for The Offing Magazine and Indicia Lit. In 2018, they were the Semi-finalist for Gold Wake Press’s Poetry Book Contest. Their words have been featured in Berkeley Poetry Review, Hobart Literary Magazine, Apogee Journal, Cordite Poetry Review and Queen Mob’s Teahouse.  

my anxiety is a yard sale of dead people’s stuff

dear climax, death is

the way i tap the ridges on her teeth with my fingernails

green lichen veins on vertical smoky quartz in damp climates

is the way i tap the sides of tupperware since i was a fat kid

we only get better when we acknowledge our limits and short comings

is she durable enough to keep around because toxic cycles birth fears

the shock of first bites are sweeter than tips of shishito peppers

i have an irrational fear that i’m going to go blind mid-fucking

are two womyn durable enough unlearn what our cultures deem

sinister since to supplement means to both extend and replace

i’m just looking for a spot in your body to fail in - to hide my face in

clarity is not sudden it catapults from primal emotions in the cold sun

in your absence i turn into a gargoyle frozen peppercorn

and birds die when they try to defecate on me

isn’t death just another climax dear

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ovary picking

the faint black hairs on my knuckles are yours

broad shoulders cereus centric wide calves

and humpback strut are biological calculations

i have of you — how much of myself

have i constructed from your absence?

i’m learning to use the perfect amount

of tact or is it haste hate wit words are dew

vessels bergamot infusion wicker baskets

and mornings are for jasmine picking since

they open at night if this is not another

letter i wont send to my father cliches

this is a semi-truck on a wet highway

tedious hours and desert mirages are junkies

for night blooming flora when omissions clear

space for present negation to look at gawk

to wonder at — when moderation is unsettling

in abundance use axillary clusters to break

up a wall’s monotony a meditation apparatus

i have fought against what i can’t remember

ankles rolled outward refractions and light leaks

muscles out of control in small consistent pains

they used to be because you is are what are used

to be but be i is were is was what is are now not

now but now now here this here here where out

of control as in product of control as in total control

how can i still be searching for you in every woman?

it’s not like you’re dead but these false narratives

i weave are as bulbous as jasmine pearls unfurl

all i really want to do is learn how to brew death