Justin Marks
WE THINK WHAT WE DO BECAUSE WE CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE
There’s a second time for everything. To keep finding friends, change the questions. Look into the face of the crowd and see that it’s not crowded. Our bodies no longer burdens, our debts restructured. Each thought we have again is a new discovery. The rain-slicked green of trees reawakening in spring. Baby dragon ribs stained red, abandoned on the side of the road. I close my eyes. Walk down a crowded street. Pray. A spiritual world materializing. People in the poem replenishing their dead cells.
JUSTIN MARKS is a co-founder of Birds, LLC, an independent poetry press, and lives in New York City with his family. His most recent books are If This Should Reach You in Time (Barrelhouse, 2022) and The Comedown (Publishing Genius, 2021).
ISSUE FOURTEEN features poetry by Austin Araujo, Rae Armantrout, Aaron Baker, David Baker, Cal Bedient, John Berryman, Daniel Borzutzky, Izzy Casey, Colby Cotton, Cortney Lamar Charleston, Yongyu Chen, William Virgil Davis, Maggie Dietz, Kirsten Kaschock, David Kirby, Virginia Konchan, Timothy Liu, Airea D. Matthews, Ted Mathys, Erika Meitner, Olatunde Osinaike, Mary Ruefle, Natalie Shapero, Jordan Stempleman, and Matthew Tuckner; fiction by Tyler Barton, Elizabeth Hart Bergstrom, Tom Howard, and John Dermot Woods; nonfiction by Emmeline Clein, Aryn Kyle, David Stuart MacLean, and Justin Quarry; and Airea D. Matthews in conversation with Devon Walker-Figueroa.