ANDROMEDA IRIS
devastated
kingdom
you broadcast
erstwhile
eclipse
and with
the sickle
curvatures
of the moon
every night
dispossessed
your light
blooms
bisque as
i wallow
inverted
the hither side
of an aurora
once
invisible
to us
**
HOW SAD I WAS TO MISS IT
i speak
you speak
honeydew
did you
not hear
the trilling
conducting succulence
the serrated blade
giving the gift
of breath
a sheen
to seeds
a sarcophagus
splits
transcendence
that performs
its haptics
immanence
how sad
i was
to miss it
**
HUSH
in what
kind hush
has its
beauty held
and does
allow to
listen of
soft hums
the hope for
untold blossoms
enters but
tepidly
another solstice
gone
to make room
for that same
shameful garden
a wilderness
of wilt
hitherto stalks
my starry
eyed palm
**
PART OF ME MONGOL
still
nowhere
with myself
beckoned
i lost
my reason
to abrasion
archiving ancestor-
strewn valleys
dimly passable
slight-eyed
& cached
the third-
person
of another
pasture
shares my
blood type
after years
of siege
and a western
residency
resides still
a part of me
Mongol
**
I’VE GONE QUIET
for the dishonest
wager
the number of
the riot
wielded by
flight attendants
valets
bike messengers
& mercenaries
humoring appetites
for the journey
reach
reach deceivingly
the laughing
summit
the ipse
oops
labyrinth
a minor accident
an apology
looking for
something
to say
of repair
that would
save us
**
JARED DANIEL FAGEN is the author of The Animal of Existence (Black Square Editions, 2022). His prose poems, essays, and conversations have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, Lana Turner, and Asymptote, among other publications. He is the editor and publisher of Black Sun Lit, a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, and an adjunct lecturer at the City College of New York. Born in Jeollanam-do, South Korea, he lives in Brooklyn and the western Catskills.