Issue #25.3 A Double Issue: Jennifer Klein and Tohm Bakelas
A Poem by Jennifer Klein
Jackfruits
Jackfruits take hold of my eyes like a glare But one I wield- like a lightsaber My mind finally at peace Neuron-deep In the mysticism of bubbleless gum
Vegan this, vegan that How could animal death lead me here? Cows crying, pigs squealing Future ghosts haunted my teeth To sink into plant ovaries year after year
There’s no way my own ovaries taste this good The teratoma that consumed one Might beg to differ But it was born into a jackfruitless existence And the poor thing didn’t even know it
This is a secret language Obscure fruits in the west Animal lovers are fluent in it A perfume to chase away Incessant doom attacking their nest
Sensitive, sensitive! Why do us soyfolk care so much? Blood and guts is what makes people tough But little does it know It can be ripped apart by love
Forbidden fruit is easy mode Rare ones love you while they can Jackfruits love you, animals love you Only one is killed to be ripped apart In your hands
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Jennifer Klein is a writer, musician, and artist. Poetry is one of her favorite ways to make social commentary and merge her inner and outer worlds. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in Hawai`i Pacific Review, Fahmidan Journal, Bombfire, Green Ink Poetry, and others. She received a bachelor’s degree in English with minors in Dutch Studies and Norwegian from Indiana University Bloomington.
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A Poem by Tohm Bakelas
“clarity”
Call it the Purkinje effect, but the leaves on Parks Road might as well have been painted by Van Gogh’s ghost this afternoon.
And perhaps that’s what makes grey days (such as this) favorable to poets—we’re forced to face the colors of life we desperately try avoiding.
As if those colors will somehow cause us to lose our allure to the shadows, like our fixation with death and darkness will somehow dissipate.
Tonight, dry your eyes by the fire. We need all the clarity we can get.
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Tohm Bakelas is a social worker in a New Jersey psychiatric hospital. His poems have been printed widely in journals, zines, and online publications all over the world, including: Cardinal Sins Journal, Hiram Poetry Review, Ignatian Literary Journal, Mantis, Pinyon, Poetry South, Red Coyote, the Roanoke Review, and US 1 Worksheets. He is the author of “Cleaning the Gutters of Hell” (Zeitgeist Press, 2023) and “The Ants Crawl in Circles” (Bone Machine, Inc., 2024).
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