person Jon Cone, four poems

Jon Cone is a writer who lives in Iowa City. His published works include LEAST (Greying Ghost), THE PLESYRE BARGE (Greying Ghost), SITTING  GETTING  UP  SITTING  AGAIN (Standing Guard in a Cornfield Press), FAMILY PORTRAIT WITH TWO DOGS BLEEDING (Phrygian Press), as well he has appeared in several anthologies and numerous journals both online and in print. His collection COLD HOUSE will be published in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in the fall of 2017.

~

YOU ARE NOT LATE, IT IS ONLY THE PRELUDE THAT PLAYS

This subtle theater where affection exists on light breeze, this hill that bends us to the river edged by dogwood where songs once heard are windows open onto long silence. They were lovely: in their off-key purity they put beauty on hold. How you took their diligent notes. What you have will surprise you by marking the measure of what is lost, as the beams of the catalog four-square are hoisted above full-belled hills, turning years into adult children, and the heart-ache
that occupies the land is yours alone in hope.

It is winter, even in summer. It is winter, when green erupts along the path to the orchard. And it is winter when red leaves spin one last turn. The audience flutters. Chimes stir. Old drunk time enters. Throats grip the hymnal flush as eyes send out beams to meet other beams. Kitchen mugs and preserves thrum, boot-sounds from the porch.

~

POEM WRITTEN AT
THE SUNLAND MOTEL:
FREE COFFEE TV ICE

The Frigidaire lies down
upon a crown of noise.
The mind exists. It snows
like a hum hum hurrah
awaiting compensation.

The day will end.
The week will end, the month.
The year will exit by its key.

No antiquities afoot.
No cha cha cha.
What remains is mystery:
the radical donation
to the Arctic nothingness
of the hum hum hurrah.

~

ON BEING FROM SOMEWHERE

I have never met anyone who has been
To the village where I was born
I would like to meet someone who
Has been to that place where I was

Let’s pretend there is a cold church
Blackbirds and some thatch
Pale elders in loose sweaters
A stone for the palm to touch

I have never met anyone who has been
To the village where I was born
My mother has gone there I think
While my father trips hard up the hill

When I visit the village where I was
You do not know me nor I you
Though we go to the river to sea
We drift in the salt of our days

~

BLOOD

My mind blooms
outside the pawn
shop window.
I am struck
dumb by knives
in their morgue
-like brilliance.
All I want is good
blade, an edge.
Some cool
distance from
my life, this sleet,
this rust, my shoes
that flicker like
sour flames
at the end
at the end of
the weird alley
where blood
goes to clot.

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