What Rough Beast | Poem for September 26, 2017

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J. Bradley
The Ribcage Tries To Remember The First And Last Names Of Every Lover It Woke Up Next To (But Can’t)

You once cared about loving two or more different men with the same first name, how you didn’t want to overlay bodies, form monsters from memory, but your hunger ate away your concern for continuity; the better man is always the one who wants you, even when he has seven arms, five legs, three and a half faces, and a name you can actually say.

 

J. Bradley is the author of the poetry collection Dodging Traffic (Ampersand Books, 2009), the novella Bodies Made of Smoke (HOUSEFIRE, 2012), the graphic poetry collection The Bones of Us (YesYes Books, 2014), illustrated by Adam Scott Mazer, the prose poem chapbook It Is A Wild Swing Of A Knife (Choose the Sword Press, 2015), the flash fiction chapbook No More Stories About The Moon (Lucky Bastard Press, 2016), the novel The Adventures of Jesus Christ, Boy Detective (Pelekinesis, 2016) and the prose poem collection Pick How You Will Revise A Memory (Robocup Press, 2016). His flash fiction chapbook, Neil, won Five Quarterly‘s 2015 e-chapbook contest for fiction. His story, “Kyle”, was selected for Wigleaf‘s top 50 (very) short fictions for 2016. Bradley’s work as appeared in decomP, Hobart, and Prairie Schooner, among other journals. He received his MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Mo.

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