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NORTHEAST OHIO SPOTLIGHT

hymnal

Poetry by ​Jason Harris

for Nia Wilson, after and with an image borrowed from Kaveh Akbar

how sweet the organ from the pulpit the one never penetrated
w/ a knife        the one that doesn’t stop beating ‘til the cords
are released     how sweet the children of sun who violence
doesn’t reach       & my god how sweet the snot / clear & thick
& runny of every infant       how sweet the thought of flowers
or something gone wrong    no longer am i charting new
hypotheses     god will you accept me the way i am?     i intend
to do well        am often taken out of my element w/ grieving
an eighteen year old black girl was stabbed today     to death
i know b/c npr said so       dear heavenly mother      how sweet
the metallic drip      the nasal reporting        how sour the fruit
of those who leave no hope for this country        how sweet
the haves       i have missed fajr this morning       every surah learned
i’ve forgotten       how sweet Summer 2014 tasted       bedford ohio
the sight of you w/o hijab        w/o t-shirt     to say i wept in the soft
light of your bedroom / holy quran prostrated above your head
an understatement     to say i ever retained anything in life
blasphemous      al-fatiha is one i remember     the light the bee
a cow’s heart      the size of my head     beats sixty beats a minute
the body     a temple on loan from jannah    til npr tells you it isn’t
tells you the suspect is still on the loose     how sweet the metallic drip
nasal reporting      b/c grass is greener there does not mean angels
have arrived      how sweet the partition       between damage & desire
once i wrote beat me in a poem as my lover beat me     i still don’t know
what i meant      or to which lover i was referring        one expects a lover
to be memory        easy to conjure up    to block out      vice-versa
always good        always there     kind-hearted as an extended palm
a palm clenched is a sign of aggression           say i’m-done-talking
say what’s-up-then?      a knife to the lung          across the knape of the neck
say someone-call-the-police!   say this girl is dying!            say black lives
matter!        
one can expect one of two things when falling out of love
or out of line          god, do you heal all wounds?b/c i appear it
does not mean i am okay          my father’s fiance ébirthed two girls this year
& this year marks four years since Michael Brown in Missouri
was killed     dear lord     how sweet the grievance four years later
anytime i am sick      or think about my own death reported by npr
i become anxious    dear god        when i die or in another world live
forever       instruct someone to write on the tombstone a registry
of my gratitude: being black       public radio     a caesura that shakes
its head / shivers at the adhan /       when Kaveh Akbar said in a poem:
“it is not God but the flower behind God I treasure”         & so it is not death
but Nia Wilson      smiling behind death for whom this hymn is for​
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Jason Harris
​

Jason Harris is an educator, poet, and a NEOMFA candidate. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine, TRACK//FOUR, OCCULUM, Longleaf Review, Wildness Journal, Peach Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and others. He is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of BARNHOUSE Journal, a contributor for Watermelanin Magazine, and lives in Cleveland.

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