Just released, The Fool by Jessie Jones takes on what it means to be human in the twenty-first century. As students begin returning to school under these strange circumstances — masks, online classes, hand sanitizer, social distancing — we wanted to share a poem from Jones’s debut collection to inspire us.
Eclipse
In every which way, I am living
for potential. I’ve mined cadmium
enough to roulette with death
and Mars, bloodshot brute,
is swollen in my honour.
My function is action —
to pummel through concrete
and machete hedges,
to shear the irresolute
with only wit and lichen-rich
perfume. Allow yourself
to make you is cross-stitched
at the bough of every ingress.
Fool is to worry. Fool is to wait
for someone to tell me what I know
already. I clap for a mind
that can change and will.
I harness nature’s fortitude
and call bats down to crush
the self-doubt that parades
as my true self in platform
sandals, teetering and ignorant
of the hidden message of fate.
That I will flourish
even without permission.
Excerpted from The Fool. Copyright © 2020 by Jessie Jones.
