#major jackson

[april-is]

April 9, 2026: Let Me Begin Again, Major Jackson

Let Me Begin Again Major Jackson

Let me begin again as a quiet thought in the shape of a shell slowly examined by a brown child on a beach at dawn straining to see their future. Let me begin this time knowing the drumming in my dreams is me inheriting the earth, is morning lighting up the rivers. Let me burn my vanities: old music in the pines, sifters of scotch, a day moon like a signature of night. This time, let me circle the island of my fears only once then live like a raging waterfall and grow a magnificent mustache. Let me not ever be the birdcage or the serrated blade or the empty season. Dear Glacier, Dear Sea of Stars, Dear Leopards disintegrating at the outer limits of our greed; soon we will encounter you only in motivational tweets. Reader, I should have married you sooner. This time, let me not sleep like the prophet who believes he’s seen infinity. Let me run at break-neck speeds toward sceneries of doubt. I have no more dress rehearsals to attend. Look closer: I am licking my lips.

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Inspired by the (previously shared!) Philip Levine poem of the same name.

See also: My Life Was the Size of My Life, Jane Hirshfield

Cannonball into the pool of poems from today in:

2025: kami/kaze : a correspondence, Ng Yi-Sheng 2024: Physical Therapy, Franny Choi 2023: Come Quickly, Izumi Shikibu 2022: Heretic That I Am, Tomás Q. Morín 2021: The World Has Need of You, Ellen Bass 2020: Annus Mirabilis, R. A. Villanueva 2019: This Page Ripped Out and Rolled into a Ball, Brendan Constantine 2018: Winter Stars, Larry Levis 2017: In That Other Fantasy Where We Live Forever, Wanda Coleman 2016: The cat’s song, Marge Piercy 2015: The Embrace, Mark Doty 2014: No. 6, Charles Bukowski 2013: A Schoolroom in Haiti, Kenneth Koch 2012: Track 5: Summertime, Jericho Brown 2011: Death, Is All, Ana Božičević 2010: Heaven, William Heyen 2009: April in Maine, May Sarton 2008: Making Love to Myself, James L. White 2007: Publication Date, Franz Wright 2006: Living in the Body, Joyce Sutphen 2005: Aberration (The Hubble Space Telescope before repair), Rebecca Elson

[firstfullmoon]

It must be the supermarket in me, all lit from inside, full of wide aisles and thoughtful shelf-stocking where you’ll find my feelings and memories. That’s why on the outside I look so ordered and put together. My inner supermarket contains an old-world butcher shop and fish market. Shoppers arrive with an unfathomable hunger which I relieve by offering freshness, quality, and value. Some are penniless and can only fantasize, licking their lips at rows of artisanal cheeses and meats behind glass display cases, the clothbound bries and goat, at ropes of cured salami and prosciutto. Still they taste. I offer free samples at stations throughout my supermarket so people will come to know and like me. In the produce department, many test my pears and avocados for ripeness. In the floral area, they sniff. Some walk off with my bouquets. I contain cheerful baggers who will escort you to your car. At times, truthfully, I dislike this about myself, forever accommodating. I’ve not always had a supermarket in me. It began when the church in me lost its congregation and when I lost my mother’s love to cocktails and other stimulants. There is no place for anger in my supermarket. I keep it in the backroom with a sign that reads “No Trespassing: Employees Only.” It’s a way of being in the world, a self, full of checkout lines and refrigerators, until someone runs through me, knocking down my pyramids of canned goods or panic shopping, leaving empty aisles.

— Major Jackson, “It Must Be the Supermarket in Me”

[havingapoemwithyou]

ode to everything  by Major Jackson

[thegirlthatcriesacademia]

Virginia Woolf // Reina María Rodríguez // Henry Rollins // Henry David Thoreau // Major Jackson // Helen Hunt Jackson // Peggy Toney Horton // Julia de Burgos // Dante Émile

[poetsandwriters]

Major Jackson in “Exalted Uterrance,” an interview published in the September/October 2010 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

[newsmutproject]

Your whole body agrees you’d rather lie here like a snail in my arm’s crook, nude and oblivious of all e-mails. Yes, it’s nearly one o’clock, but we have more reasons to kiss, to engage in small talk. For one, these blissful seasons are short, & tomorrow is never insured...

from “Aubade,” by Major Jackson

[berrylvr]

major jackson, ode to everything

[lunchboxpoems]

PATHETIC FALLACY

Jog through this suburb at a blue hour when bliss blows over dewy lawns and neighbors walk suspicious dogs inhaling trunks of oaks and birches like a posse of pet detectives, and roused yet cautious, a first mourning dove sings.

Ponder your existence, which someday will no longer animate the world of creatures and aviaries.

Could your limbs survive without always naming the flawless cathedrals of leaf-branches entwining above your head?

Isn’t this what you meant by truly living? Do you believe it?

Did you mistreat the vowels? When did you begin to speak, you who love the grace of a fireplace, its morning ash the aftermath of a desperate battle?

You, too, were trying to recover the myth of Philomela in your own time, in your own district, in a tenement built for the wounded and discontent.

Those early days you lived in shadows, speechless from what you could not name, yet its absence ever present and growing in a field peopled by your metaphoric propositions. You turn onto Circle Drive — a dragonfly inspects the dark city of your head.

MAJOR JACKSON