Jakob Maier is an MFA candidate at Syracuse University, where he works as a poetry editor for Salt Hill Journal. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Shabby Doll House, Wu Wei Fashion Magazine, Metatron's ÖMËGA blog, The Mays Anthology, Human Parts, and more. You can find him at jakobmaier.art and twitter.com/goodtimejakob.
2 poems by Jakob Maier
SONG ABOUT THE MOUNTAINS
This is not a poem about
horses. This is not a poem
about being in love, or about
losing that love. This is not
a poem about my dead friends,
no matter how much I miss
them. This is not even a poem
about how bad I am, or how
good I am, or how much I laugh
at politics or blooming roses or
my own sadness. Everyone said
to write a poem about living
so this is it. Katie singing me
her song about the mountains.
After that, supposing I’m finished.
EXPERIENCING & BEING EXPERIENCED
First the sunrise, then the turning over in bed
like a planet alone in its orbit. You throwing
the blanket off & eating fresh cherries. Naked
body with the windows open & all the birds
loud & watching. Somewhere in the past a man
& a woman wake in their tent by the highway.
Somewhere in the future you wish it would
happen again. Longing, you remember the poet
wrote, because desire is full of endless distances.
And what Tim said, I remained angry until
I found my emptiness. The way a book is empty
until it is opened & found otherwise. How you
want to share each morning with the person
you’ve loved, but they are always so far off
in a different morning. So when you’re in bed
& think the worst thing about living is experiencing
& being experienced, it’s not quite right—
the worst thing is that to eat a cherry you must
first pull off the stem, and after, you must spit
out the pit. You will never eat the fruit whole.