Yoke
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Yoke
1
consider the yoke. its violent geometry.how wood and metal blur every border.grandpa Earl is tilling tobacco in the heavy dark,cuffed by the neck to a nameless mule.when he meets Lena, he will propose on the spot.repent of the land. head North to hunt for a fresh start. tobacco season came & fled.1933 paused to catch its breath and grandpa was gone.started a second family right down the block. called it providence.
2
my mother stays for the sake of premise, a promise made in the wake of my sister’s birth.she loves the three of us despite him. to spite him. she cannot leave, any morethan she can unlearn the shape of our mouths, rescind 32 years of cooking for a shadow.what does it mean to be wholly for another? to count your seed as both anchor & anima?
3
bulletproof glass turned my older brother into a prime number. stuffed his libretto ina cage. corrections: as if he were an essay of bone. dad was wrong. the belt’s leathercadence is all my brother and I share, all that binds us across age & the irreverence ofsteel. [End Page 312]
Joshua Bennett hails from Yonkers, New York. He is a third-year doctoral candidate in the English Department at Princeton University, a participant in the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, and a teacher of 8th grade composition. His poetry has either been published or is forthcoming in Anti-, Tidal Basin Review, Drunken Boat, Storyscape, and Muzzle. He is also the founding editor of Kinfolks Quarterly.
