Jacob Griffin Hall
January 5
We’re watching cable news but now the day
is at our backs—two sodas in the fridge,
a lazy wind against the sliding glass.
I want to see you through the century’s
screen door, our doomsday with the candles lit,
devices off, I want to march with you
straight through a revolutionary dream—
and not asleep, you dream of sodas cold
inside the fridge, and still awake, I thumb
my passive magazine, then thumb the screen
to death to shake the candle’s waning glare.
We’re watching cable news before we sleep.
What wouldn’t burn to calm the tarry sky
and who would dare to make the sky a heaven?
Jacob Griffin Hall was raised outside of Atlanta, Ga, and lives in Columbia, Mo, where he is a Ph.D. candidate and works as poetry editor of The Missouri Review. His first collection of poems, Burial Machine, was selected as the winner of the 2021 Backlash Best Book Award and is forthcoming with Backlash Press. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, New South, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, New Ohio Review Online, and elsewhere.
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