When I say: you
I feel safe
knowing you
your self will never read this poem
nor any poem, because today, winter solstice
2009 I held the startling
weight of your ashes
a fraction of these freelancing molecules
once belonging to your cornea
whose color I can/t recall—
When I said you
should read: Under the Banner of Heaven
last summer, in this cabin you built
the parting phrase I can never go back on remains:
Have fun with your frustration—
Meaning: Joseph Smith was a snake oil salesman—
Your wizardly eyebrows misreading
me as gloating over your loss
of memory. And I had to remind my
self as we gathered around your rapidly wintering
remains, mouth agape
as Civil War daguerreotypes
how the uncontrolled division
of abnormal cells
in the section of the skull
I override daily, immoderately, w/ grain
alcohol dyed Kentucky amber
had long since helped you calmly forget
my tactless slip of the tongue
& all else
there/s no body now left
for remembering.
Scott Alexander Jones completed his MFA at The University of Montana, and began the above poems as Writer-in-Residence at The Montana Artists Refuge during the fall of 2009. A chapbook of his poetry, One Day There Will Be Nothing to Show That We Were Ever Here, was released in 2009 by Bedouin Books, and my poems have appeared most recently in: Third Coast, Bombay Gin, Forklift Ohio, Camas, Brilliant Corners, Sixty-Six: A Journal of Sonnet Studies, Fast Forward, and Ellipsis. He is the co-founder and poetry editor of Zerø Ducats, a literary journal assembled entirely from recycled materials and distributed for free.