Slick as an Albino Seal from Knee to Toe and other poems by Jeremiah Driver

lit by moonlight,
she said I want you

to know I’m beautiful.
Her shirt folded

above her head
like a jellyfish.

She hid her nipples
behind her knees,

and seemed afraid,
on my bed, to face

what was on my mind.
YES I said

with my
silence,

man created fire because he cannot look
without rubbing two things together.

Her legs straightened with the strength
that pulls continents across oceans.

---

Needlework

The sculptor’s needle
Scratched legs out of clay.
Carried the ants over manikin toes
Onto the carpet in Macy’s.
They donned snowshoes
Navigating miles of white tile.
Scaled my summit
Found me fuming.
Saying yes
To every god damned coat she tried on.
The clay in the ant’s inner ears
Must’ve yet, been wet, still.
Because they didn’t hear . . . I’m tired
oh, that looks nice my feet hurt . . . yes
/ / I’m tired.
Feel like murdering everyone
Who ever made a fucking coat.
Was it the distance between my mouth
And their bitter, inner ears?
Maybe it was the ant’s inability to stop
That made them sting.

---

The Child She Wanted to Share

Her naked body was my pelvis.
She whispered call me your wife
– prayed for me to cum inside her –
own me for the rest of my life.

I saw a purple shirt my mother could afford
in a Wal-Mart dressing room mirror
that held a face as it learned what it was
not to have a choice. The starved child
I could’ve loved with the strength
of comets and creeks.

About the author:

Jeremiah Driver earned an MFA in Writing at Sarah Lawrence College where he was awarded the Thomas Lux Award. He has worked as a horse trainer, a service member in the United States Army, a general laborer on a construction crew in Manhattan, and taught literacy/ writing for non-profits in Queens and the Bronx. His work has appeared in “Terminus,” “Catch and Release (Columbia Journal),” “FLAPPERHOUSE,” “The UCity Review,” and “Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland.”