John James
John James is the author of The Milk Hours, selected by Henri Cole for the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize and published in 2019 by Milkweed Editions. His poems appear in Boston Review, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Poetry Northwest, Best American Poetry 2017, and elsewhere, and his work has been supported by fellowships and awards from the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, the Academy of American Poets, and Georgetown’s Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in English at the University of California, Berkeley.
Metamorphoses
what was it this
morning : you said
redgrass glistens
in surf : the pine
board fence collapsed
along the line : after
the storm a kestrel
in headwind : sand
accumulates on your
feet : puckered seal
skin : the salt-washed
flesh : wreckage towing
upshore : when the
gulls came out I saw
them circling in air :
saw them pecking
seals’ eyes from
torn skin : a boy
downstrand rolling
in dunes : I could see
the stomach’s red
wall : the small hairs
on its flippers : blubber
wretched by shark
bite from the belly’s
swell : later seen
from a dune : black
water : fish spit
pooling : mouth open
enough to see teeth
trailing in sand : his lips
limp : there in
the storm’s wake
I wanted something
to say : the ocean
scraped his insides clean
From The Milk Hours (Milkweed Editions, 2019)
Links
- Writer’s Website.
- “To Change the Shape of the Brain in the Heart.” Interview with Rob Schlegal. BOMB Magazine. 24 April 2019.
- Review of The Milk Hours. Publishers Weekly. 16 May 2019.
Media
Ilya Kaminsky & John James Reading I September 24, 2019
Reading I September 24, 2019