is still the same blue crucifix
I carried as a child.
Its weight is different,
lighter even, but I know now
it’s a permanent promise.
Something not easily shaken
by wind or rain,
or my grown-up body.
Birds still linger there,
slashes of light,
cryptic words painted
up and down the beams.
But my Golgotha is nowhere
to be seen. No hills
disrupt the landscape.
My terminal path
never crosses
the horizon of myth.
Ecological Questions
What will happen when
the little angel
or monstrous god
brings up its face
and touches the edge
of daylight?
When the water is no longer
a boundary between
their world and ours?
When wading in thick
green boots is a danger
greater than a bomb,
and summer nearly kills us
with its blazing hands?
Disturbed Ground
I’m through with the diamond path
at the end of summer,
the providential way of insects and light.
Let darkness drop its shawl
on the ruined sumacs,
on the mowed-down bodies of children
sleeping brightly under the grass.
Their favorite cartoon ties
hanging between their ribcages
like long bony tongues
just waiting to feast
on the first exquisite drops
from the grates of radiance.
Seth Jani lives in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven Circle Press. Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Journal, Chiron Review, Ghost City Review, Rust+Moth and Pretty Owl Poetry, among others. Their full-length collection, Night Fable, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2018. Visit them at www.sethjani.com.
Andrew Marathas is a longtime writer and arts educator living and working in Salem, Massachusetts with a history of facilitating arts summer camp programming for teenagers in Connecticut and teaching higher ed materials and concepts classes for college-age illustrators in Massachusetts. He graduated from Montserrat College of Art in 2007 with a BFA in Illustration. More of his works can be found on social media @andrewmarathas – or simply through his website, www.andrewmarathas.com.
