Jack Chelgren

IN THE TWILIGHT OF OPTIONS

ethical body care begins at-home streaming

undercover cops no

I had to impeach those guys

cancel talk

I couldn’t stay babied in the silo of the heart

yet am no one’s Copernicus

or bradly undressed                 life is crude

in these leathers, predictably flex 

I just need some money to remember my name

some thoughts in whose way I make sense

with the jackhammered sidestreets 

the refurbished dells

a late bolshevik’s shampoo commercial

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PITY FEELS LIKE POWER

meaning one thing is banished

another is stored

How a mommy cat hisses

when you open the door to the bathroom

where she’s kept with her little ones

where they must be kept

until something in their bodies turns over

If ethics begins at a fixed starting point and grows outward

if mercy is visible in the meshwork

and expression gives shape to its angle

to bludgeon or cut or detour

Who’ll enjoy a wide tongue

contract, captcha

and haggle me out of my

into my begging

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Jack Chelgren is a poet and essayist from Seattle whose writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Tripwire, The Seventh Wave, The Rumpus, on Metatron Press's Instagram and at the Northwest Film Forum. 

Tweets @thelonguepuree