Jericho Jennifer Nelson
Some Big Questions
why are boys technosalvationists?
there was a primrose nearby
trying to exemplify a primrose
in that special way
primroses can’t.
there is a slutrose on the horizon
in full ambigendrous mutation
and in the loft district three silhouettes
against dawn on the unbuilt
seventh floor of luxury
apartments curl in a row
like worms
on a branch:
underskin horror
tingling. choose
a guzheng or a xylophone. the plinks.
why are there no great women artists?
the energy for masking
externalized as drones
drones. against this the quest
to make discarded railways
and the residue of labor
into a commons
where one can learn to joke
in that way that isn’t joking
like birds
bring to the end an exemplary
fictional
memory of dinosaurs
Love against the Government of Every Country
somewhere the bombs
somewhere the fertile
bombs the forest the dappling
Rashomon the gate the city
bombed the woman
black and white the four
harbingers above us richtung
venezuela stadiums as craters
reposting get your war on
the sunlight on september 12th
my brother safe had never
drank the triangle
of witness will
the satellites rebel
against a god’s eye view
watercolors laid years later
over charcoal
they caught the robber they hung him
in the same tree they played in as children
somewhere the drone
must take the honey
Non-Practicing Murderer Seeks Love
what is the German
for sallies forth
every night a jet flies
inside the bedroom
so the only technique
for interpreting ghosts
is the wicked martyr
Empirical
dressed as Christ
+
I’ll be honest.
I can handle ghosts in my dreams.
but I don’t want to tell you
who I starve in the kitchen
or who I turn up louder
in the noise machine.
+
ailuromorphic,
the taste inside the urn
is the taste in your mouth.
after the rotted planks
held together by threads
a room overlooks a garden
covered in snow.
+
when you become the ruin
someone’s pet
will see you crying
and get horny
the owner says you’re weak, their pet
will dominate you
but they’re lucky you don’t act
+
as if the sky
isn’t enough
shine the planets
and constellations onto
it, goofy
terrarists. still die
dunkle Nacht
fährt aus to get
you. the god
of one repetition
meets the other
we must be theirs
their loving
altercation
Jericho Jennifer Nelson is the author of On the Way to the Paintings of Forest Robberies (Fence, 2025), Harm Eden (UDP, 2021), Civilization Makes Me Lonely (Ahsahta, 2017), and Aim at the Centaur Stealing Your Wife (UDP, 2015). They are also the author of two books of art history and a founding co-editor of the art historiography journal Selva. They live in Philly.