person Jon Cone, two 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.

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The following poems are taken, with permission, from two of his unpublished manuscripts.

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HOUSE ARREST

Writ large your ravished inventories.
I don’t even know your weight.
What took place, already forgotten.
You leave, close the door behind you.

In my tower all around me the quaint debris
of my winter campaign, my summer,
under a fine hoary dust.

Anna Akhmatova, you and your death poems.
Everyone saying goodbye, even
those who failed to arrive.

Love is the integer, musk, heat.
I am learning Russian the better to take
your pulse. The better to record it in my blood.

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SLEDS MADE OF BONE

There are iron
moments – how
human it is
to speak –

when one says
to another
I don’t know
& I don’t care.

Birds. A nearby
fountain. Two
homeless kings
at dusk.

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