Tag: Jason Gordy Walker

Upcoming Reading: Sunday, 10/27 — 7pm Eastern

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Sunday, October 27 — 7pm (Eastern)
Featured Poets: Ace Boggess, CL Bledsoe, Anton Yakovlev, Jason Gordy Walker
Tickets available here (Free or Donation)

~ About The Featured Poets ~ 

Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, including Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021), I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, and The Prisoners. His writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Notre Dame Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.

Raised on a rice and catfish farm in eastern Arkansas, CL Bledsoe is the author of more than thirty books, including the poetry collections Riceland, The Bottle Episode, and his newest, Having a Baby to Save a Marriage, as well as his latest novels Goodbye, Mr. Lonely and The Saviors. Bledsoe lives in northern Virginia with his daughter.

Anton Yakovlev’s poetry collection One Night We Will No Longer Bear the Ocean was published in 2024 by Redacted Books, an imprint of ELJ Editions. His chapbook Chronos Dines Alone (SurVision Books, 2018) won the James Tate Poetry Prize. The Last Poet of the Village, a book of translations of poetry by Sergei Yesenin, came out from Sensitive Skin Books in 2019. Yakovlev is also the author of Ordinary Impalers (Kelsay Books, 2017) and two prior chapbooks: The Ghost of Grant Wood (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Neptune Court (The Operating System, 2015). Originally from Moscow, Russia, Anton is a graduate of Harvard University and a former education director at Bowery Poetry Club. More info here.

Jason Gordy Walker’s poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Confrontation, Measure, ONE ART, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, Vol. X: Alabama, among other places. His reviews and interviews can be found in Birmingham Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, Subtropics, and the blogs of Dos Madres Press and NewPages. He has received scholarships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute, Poetry by the Sea, and other institutions, and he earned his MFA from the University of Florida and his MA from the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Currently, he lives in Alabama and practices translating Norwegian poetry.

On Visiting My Psychologist by Jason Gordy Walker

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On Visiting My Psychologist

“I’m simply an accident. Why take it all so seriously?”
— Emil Cioran

The man inside my head preferred me dead.
I thought I would never write poetry again.

My dishes piled up like regrets in the sink.
I had nowhere to turn for love or help—

all my friends were workaholics or dead.
Instead of calling them, I smoked and wrote

an obituary for myself. What could I say?
The frost blinding my windows never went away—

day after day there was nothing but snow. I tended
to leave my stuffy home, to walk alone while I kidded

myself about such things. Hope felt like a ghost
my years would never know. I’m sorry

how I never called you back, those days you called
and called. I felt fine. My hands, dry and cracked,

flipped pages for hours. The birds packed
the dark green trees. And somehow,

somehow the sun was brighter, almost enthralled.

*

Jason Gordy Walker (he/him/his) has published poems in Broad River Review, Cellpoems, Confrontation, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Measure, One Art, Poetry South, Think, and other journals; his book reviews and interviews have appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Newpages, Subtropics, and the Dos Madres Press Blog. A recipient of scholarships from The New York State Summer Writers Institute, Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference, and The West Chester University Poetry Conference, Walker is an MFA student at the University of Florida.

Three Poems by Jason Gordy Walker

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Brilliant Trash

       —Birmingham, AL

Hardly a splash of water on my face
and I’m out the door to scrub
pots at the pub, thinking, What
a poor dish-dog I am.
Mumbling in my car
while shifting into reverse, I slam
into a can of brilliant trash:
busted beer bottles, stuffed
rabbit’s gut bleeding cotton,
box of worm-ridden donuts.
I spin out, scratching
my stubble till my chin’s red,
hit 50mph—Caution:
Children—in a school zone,
a mother in a mini-van
flipping me off
for good reason
when a line
for my next poem
pops up in my head: This
monstrous ulcer named Work
is the foundation of Art—
before I brake at the light
while sparrows flutter
on wires, then
they dive,
peck,
eat,
repeat
until the hawk swerves in.

* 

How to Delay a Panic Attack

Breathe in. Hold it. Breathe out. Repeat.
Hustle to your bathroom.
Don’t forget to scrub yesterday’s pizza
from your mouth. Breathe in.

Pluck your wild nose-hairs.
Brush lint from your shirt.
Scratch the scab off your knee
like it’s a lottery ticket.

Don’t rush on your drive to work.
Breathe out. Recite a Shakespeare sonnet.
Notice your brow’s furrows
in the rearview. Breathe in. Tally

each freckle. Are your earlobes attached
or detached? Breathe out. Rewind the tape.

*

Ode to Watching Ikiru

I pause the film. Framed by the bars of a jungle-gym,
Kanji Watanabe swings like a child, singing
“Gondola No Uta.” Snowflakes start a flurry.

Shimura shines through his role. The bureaucrat’s
final days would have been too brutal for a lesser actor:
you have stomach cancer, but your beloved son

treats you like a bank? I’ll pass. The snow falls.
Wearing his iconic hat, the old man sings,
no special effects

needed. As our hero says earlier: I don’t know
what I’ve been doing with my life. Not true.
I’m plotting against ennui, pressing play.

* 

Jason Gordy Walker (he/him) is a multi-genre writer and an MFA student in poetry at the University of Florida, where he teaches a fiction workshop. His poems have been published in Broad River Review, Cellpoems, Confrontation, Measure, and Poetry South, among others.