Korbin Jones
fallen.
in this, our only sanctuary,
where our blood won’t stain
the sidewalks or a freshly washed
t-shirt, i can hold his hand.
leave my eyes to rest.
let the air between us
become shoulders.
fables of a modern world.
re-making it like desperate gods
only wanting to praise each other,
to have a temple no greater
than a birdhouse. but so what if we do?
one day his wings will grow
wider than a robin’s, and i
will build him such a house,
a proper place for worship.
self-serving as any god. and armed.
this has precedence. not the first time
an iconoclast with a rifle aimed
at heaven, at self-made gods
of a world that’d rather see vacant skies.
vacant shrines. tombs of waiting.
gods converted to myth despite
the thunder, the screaming of our bodies
falling like hailstones,
like lightning with the rain.
then make this our last testament to living,
as a vengeful pantheon.
a flood contested and all-too-soon
forgotten, to wipe clean the sin
of visibility, of sound.
we’ll bury ourselves on impact,
covered in dirt and stardust,
burial shrouds. veils
for the weddings we’ll never have.
Korbin Jones’s work has appeared in Noctua Review, Polaris, Blue Route, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Missouri’s Best Emerging Poets (Z Publishing, 2018). Jones is a senior at Northwest Missouri State University, where he is pursuing a double BA in writing and Spanish. In the fall he will enter the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Kansas.
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