Jacob Rivers (2 poems)
my mother brings us to see him at Memorial
He looks at me and doesn’t consider the rain that will soon fill the basement. This monsoon is new to our landscape, and we still consider ourselves yuccas, thirsty along the edges of the mountains. My mother stands close behind, her hands waiting for me to collapse into the ground. I admire his hair that turns white at the pace of drying blood. It shifts back to bioluminescent every night. He forgets that twilight breaks beneath night and summersaults into tomorrow again. He forgets a name. He won’t forget my eyes. I am growing tall like the elk limbs we buried among the roots of our willow tree. He tells me this. We ripple upwards quickly, pushing the air onto its sides.
The Window
The cold
belongs
to me.
A deer
stalks the
snow covered
shelter of
leaves,
he arches
his neck
to untie
the last
fruit
abandoned by
the decaying
tree.
Jacob Rivers is a writer and translator from New England. Currently, he's an MFA candidate at New England College and serves as the Assistant to the Director at The Frost Place in Franconia, New Hampshire.