JAKE HARGROVE
Screen/Poem for the Approaching Summer
Stained teeth on the projectionist,
sixteen, a white spot on the right
incisor, a burn mark––the first
summer he will spend on his own.
His language was once horseplay,
scabbed shins, bruises of all shapes.
Now it is of time: time in, time out,
time off, O.T. Lunch time.
From his window time goes by
frames, stills, a singular exposed
breast. At night he dreams pre-
nuclear, without number, large nozzles,
dripping pipes and their respective
meters, loose phrases, endless
tubing. He is sticky most mornings
when he wakes. And then he eats.
What is sad, truly sad, has to do
with time and how it is rented.
He knows that. A dark room, only
a quarter-full, and a moth-beamed
cloud of light, caught flat on screen,
where time is limbless and dry.
In sex, where there are no limbs
and there is no time, he will be forgiven.
In time, where there is no sex,
he will receive his lauration:
in the teeth marks of a film strip,
burning and coiling upon itself,
like a snake in a fire.
––––
Jake Hargrove is a writer from North Carolina who lives in New York. He is the editor-in-chief of Cult Magazine. You can read more of his writing at ceramic-horses.com.