Jason B. Crawford
Mad Scientist
It's funny how bad news seems to bring everything down like gravity/Like broken
branches/piled on grass/sun beating down on rouged jaw open/like detaching
hinged screws from back teeth/like bodies collapsing onto earth/making pillow
out of ant hill/The thinning of blood becoming river to cross/The moment when
reddening saliva/becomes your lake to drown in/we forget how real News can
be/The doctor said he split the back of your skull into two/as if he was trying to
open you up and examine you/ as young boys/we all want to be mad scientist/got
our doctorates in Legotology/Learn to pull everything apart to understand
it/unstitch it from the seems /We must comprehend what makes it
tick/Too often we forget how to put it back together/this is what happened
right/He forgot how to realign your pieces/once he was done operating/That's
clearly not it/You shot off at the shotgun lip and he was the recoil pushing
back/This is how you lived/unwilling to be shoved into lockers/for fear of it
being too close to closet/This is how you lived/refusing to take punches/without
penduluming back/When they told me you had gotten into a fight with the new
boy for calling you faggot/It didn't surprise me that you wanted to show him that
you were more flames than wood/It wasn’t until he was gripping your
throat/cutting off your oxygen/did you realize that he knew how to
kill a fire
branches/piled on grass/sun beating down on rouged jaw open/like detaching
hinged screws from back teeth/like bodies collapsing onto earth/making pillow
out of ant hill/The thinning of blood becoming river to cross/The moment when
reddening saliva/becomes your lake to drown in/we forget how real News can
be/The doctor said he split the back of your skull into two/as if he was trying to
open you up and examine you/ as young boys/we all want to be mad scientist/got
our doctorates in Legotology/Learn to pull everything apart to understand
it/unstitch it from the seems /We must comprehend what makes it
tick/Too often we forget how to put it back together/this is what happened
right/He forgot how to realign your pieces/once he was done operating/That's
clearly not it/You shot off at the shotgun lip and he was the recoil pushing
back/This is how you lived/unwilling to be shoved into lockers/for fear of it
being too close to closet/This is how you lived/refusing to take punches/without
penduluming back/When they told me you had gotten into a fight with the new
boy for calling you faggot/It didn't surprise me that you wanted to show him that
you were more flames than wood/It wasn’t until he was gripping your
throat/cutting off your oxygen/did you realize that he knew how to
kill a fire
Biography
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Jason B. Crawford [He/They] is a black, non-binary male, bi-poly-queer writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. In addition to being published in online literary magazines, such as Wellington Street Review, Barren Magazine, The Amistad, and Kissing Dynamite, he is also the Editor in Charge for The Knight’s Library Magazine. His chapbook collection Summertime Fine as a Short List selection for Nightingale & Gale.
Website: JasonBCrawford.com Instagram: jasonbcrawford Twitter handle: @jasonbcrawford Facebook page: By Jason B. Crawford |
