DRINKING GOURD

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

 

It rained hard the night of April 3rd
Memphis was under a tornado warning
thunder was heard among the congregation 
 
I looked to the sky for smoke 
for fire, the waters already had 
parted. 
 
Dr. King was in town to remind 
the world that we are all one 
how the arc of the moral universe
 
Is long. 
 
The next night: April 4th
King died on a motel balcony
blood, breath, and bullet 
 
He was about to go and break
bread, but this would not be 
his last supper 
 
When the motel clerk was told 
Call an ambulance 
he expired right there of cardiac arrest.
A clerk’s shock, our shock 
everywhere the sound of that 
fatal round  
 
Rabbi Heschel, the great teacher 
Talmudic scholar and King’s good friend 
said God searches for us 
 
What happens to thee happens to me.
 
I am thinking of this tonight 
since our High Court said 
the fight for equal rights has 
a racist intent 
 
In the sky the Drinking Gourd 
dips into the cosmos 
but whose cup runneth over—

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives among the Great Lakes of North America. His latest prose and poetry appears/will appear in Studio One, Mobius, Flash Flood Magazine, Dissident Voice, Right Hand Pointing, and Fifty Word Stories. 

ROBERT, NO LONGER (AM I YOUNG)

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

 

If we are refused the right to mourn

the death by fire of children in Denver

then the words of Dylan Thomas

have perhaps become equivalent to those 

of Redford’s opponent in The Candidate

 

Crocker Jarmon who bore the farm away 

with owls afloat on half wings, their beaks 

marked for taxidermies at the hands of one 

who holds their lease in a poem of a different 

name.

 

Robert, no longer am I young.

You are not bringing dignity to the undignified

character of Roy Hobbes any longer, a figment

whose greatest sin was his appetite, especially when

it came to the manager’s niece who knew beauty 

might've wanted love 

 

Redford, you could play the occasional villain

but never scum. And in your absence I wonder

if Hobbes returns to form, to the point Malamud

makes about appetites that can’t be contained

 

By outfield fences. Or the imaginations of fine

young fans. They don’t come to see you anymore

because the game, which was always partly

of the mind, dwells today in a tiny room with poor 

lighting

 

And no natural grass. Robert, I am young no longer

because the way you made Bob Woodward a warrior 

of pen on paper is impossible when so many never learn 

to write. A confession isn’t a memoir and yet we can’t escape

the text. The text is all; not even the body can tell foot from hand

without a nib.

 

But you fought for the eagle, wild rivers, expanses of mingling

bodies. Perhaps a new generation of actors will find their agency

in florid rock, beyond the tract of human mouths, who use the tongue

as a latch to withdraw monologues into long sequences of silence.

Where physical grace

 

Which you had in abundance

 

Returns talkies to their shelves. At least for awhile. 

Time enough to hear the condor, a once great Colorado 

move alpine melt waters past sumps in cabbage deserts

end this beanfield war with gestures worthy of a grand mime. 

Marcel Marceau for our riparian rights 

 

Jeremiah Johnson for the defense. 

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in Canada. His latest book is Captain's Kismet (Alien Buddha, 2025).

LIGHTNING

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Trying to make sense of lightning is about more

than science. How long should students lower

their heads, consult their books, run computer

simulations and not look outside.

 

By the time you read this message a bolt will

have struck in dozens of locations, though

you might not have registered the flash. The smell

of ozone in your nose, learning to count for thunder.

Did you know lightning can be silent. An owl.

 

Friction travels from cloud to cloud. It’s over my head

I’ve heard

told. There’s a space in the great codes for interpellations,

gnostic meanings, hidden from the rabble: debates about what’s

in plain view

 

Can someone without sight see a storm.

What if they also cannot hear.   

Lightning can be a figment of the mind:

logos. But if we cannot make observations

what is science.

 

Every one of us has dreams. There were heat storms

over my crib. I couldn’t talk but in my gut I knew some

thing was wrong.

 

Let the infants cry. For the betterment of science.

Watch them, how they respond. From the blur comes

a woman’s features. Mother? But not the storm.

 

They cry because they know she’s an electric force,

violence with the texture of milk—

Jeremy Nathan Marks knows that his own instinct to try to enucleate the problem is a self-deception. But he's stubborn. He lives and writes (stubbornly) in Canada.

BOULDER

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

Sunrise over the Flatiron Range near Boulder, Colorado.

A man has been charged with a federal hate crime and multiple other felonies after he allegedly used a makeshift flamethrower and incendiary devices to attack a crowd of people who were raising awareness for Israeli hostages in Gaza, injuring 12 victims. Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, is alleged to have shouted “Free Palestine” as he attacked the crowd on Sunday. The FBI said Soliman told police he planned the attack for a year and had specifically targeted what he described as the “Zionist group”, the Associated Press reported. —The Guardian, June 3, 2025

The Boulder mountains began as fire

perhaps that’s why they are known

as the Flatiron Range

 

If you look into their hearts you will find

fossils from the sea. Simple single cellular

creatures. Who by fire and Who by water.

 

In America, many folks like to say our story

will end in flame. I’ve seen John 3:16 signs

at Coors Field and when Mel Gibson made 

his film about Jesus, some pastor hung 

a billboard above I-25 saying the Jews 

Killed Christ. Jews kill Jews. Who gets to 

say.

 

A man throwing Molotov cocktails 

at people who want Israeli hostages freed, 

is he the authority on Jews Israel’s 

ambassador and foreign minister believe 

him to be.

 

The pressure which births mountains is 

hard to imagine. What it takes to sustain 

foundational myths across time, rebuild

temples, dream of olive trees is a pressure 

of perhaps equal force in human terms 

and very hard to fathom.

As I write this, someone would have 

you believe Jews possess a divine power 

to solve or cause all the worst excesses 

in the world. They might also think all

Palestinians want an eye for an eye. 

What is a Mashiac. Who are the prophets. 

Should we ask the mountains over Boulder.

 

The work of the Flatirons is not malevolent.

Moses didn’t receive tablets from Sinai 

but on it. Universes come and go with each 

blink of the high peaks.

Brahma sits on his lotus. 

Generals confer in bunkers.

The Earth’s crust floats on lava. 

Hashem has many names that depict 

His moods.

Not everyone says He is merely a He.

Christians speak of trinities.

 

Today, free speech invites a fire fight. 

We assemble in our mortar formations. 

I pumped gas this morning 

and it’s all I can taste.

Jeremy Nathan Marks is a former Colorado resident who lives and writes in Canada.

AUTO PARTS

by Jeremy Nathan Marks 

Trump indicated consumers could avoid tariffs by buying vehicles built entirely in the U.S., but industry experts say there’s not a single one with all-domestic parts and assembly. —NBC News, April 1, 2025

It’s a game called telephone.

 

I say fuel pump

and you say pump assembly

to the next guy who utters

maquiladora 

before his partner says

Juarez City

 

Juarez City sends me

an assembly pump and I say

Que? No entiendo.  

then I call you about a fuel

filter and you get on the horn

to your buddy in Alabama

who hears Pressure Regulator

calling up Jane in Windsor,

Ontario who phones Carlota in Sonora

 

Hola? Hola. ¿Cómo está usted?

Carlota replies

regulador de presión

Jane murmurs 

momento

and picks up from Gilles

in Trois-Rivières 

 

Ouais. Unité d’envoi de carburant?

Ouais, says Gilles.

D’accord, Gilles Jane replies

before flipping a linguistic switch

in her mind, telling

Carlota

 

Gracias, mi amiga

so that by the time she gets home

and her junior kindergartener

asks how your day was mom

she thinks he says carburetor

which is what I said to my partner

when she asked me what’s for dinner.  

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the auto-producing region of Canada. His latest book is Captain's Kismet (Alien Buddha Press, 2025).

ROCK CREEK

by Jeremy Nathan Marks

-for Roberta Flack

Today Roberta Flack reunites with Donny Hathaway at a Carter Barron concert among crowds of Washington’s famed cherry trees peeper frogs visiting dignitaries

Marvin Gaye in attendance an alternate inauguration out of doors among glorious birds

Ben Shahn might paint a syrinx chorus oh how the capital creek flows Amanda Gorman

Richard Blanco Robert Frost Maya Angelou read their work

 

I grew up here and I’ve strolled the park with the crows and the deer

watching winter turn to spring  

from far away its song of the public good is still softly killing me

 

Roberta Flack is about as well known among the mandarins in the Maison Blanche

as Richard Wright James Baldwin and Ralph Bunche Emmanuel Macron comes to town

and between correcting facts and straightening records he says France isn’t just a remembrance

of past things like the Somme the Ardennes and Maginot it’s also Nina Simone Josephine Baker

 

I grew up here have often wondered  

where is the love?

not among trees and flowers natives and exotics imperial gifts and the green thumbs

of Lady Birds in our quondam swamp of Camelot the Brain Trust on the Potomac

Rather within those amnesiacs who cannot see what it takes to get to be how great we already are

the ranging octaves and ingenious melodies rhapsody of a people who keep offering everything 

after every betrayal because getting my own means putting it out but as Ms. Flack asked

Compared to what?

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. His latest book is the short fiction collection, Captain's Kismet (Alien Buddha Press, 2025). You can follow him @Sandcounties on Substack.