from Semaphore Trousers

by Jay Besemer

*


a death in the forest, another
forest death, with the birds
and insects coming in, the rib
bons of red and the golden
bones rubbed with the fur of
other beasts. a death in the
forest where all the tender parts
are carried off, as the lost skin
dries, the still breath waits. by
the river, stretched out on the
floodplain, where the bank leans
away, a death in the forest, call
ing to another group of beings.
calling to be observed, as grief
takes the form of recording and
is held in the hands for a long
moment, a long hanging word.

*

*


i have come to give you this
gemstone, to tell you some
gigantic displacement of his
tory or a tall tale badly. i will
share this water and some of
these apples. there is plenty
to go around, and i do, i go
around in circles and around
the insides of my heart and
even around inside yours. but
that’s supposed to be a secret,
and now i went and told it, i
went and tolled like a great
bell in some high tower, and
here you are, hearing me tell
you what i have to give. but
i will not tell you why.

*

*


in the place where the seminary
once stood, in the rubble and
clods, the long pond around which
geese march, out of bounds and in
view, we cross a fallen fence, we tread
over the keep out sign. there, three
hills, a ghost moon above them, dead
center, my shadow a long gray
carpet. the engine of our hilarity
sputters on. another block of
horizon reflected in the dark
water before us, bits and scrub,
rogue landscaping, firs, an air
of embarrassment by abandonment.
ask the teasel what had come
before, before the seminary, before
the windows of the hotel and the five,
dozen, fifty who may have noticed us,
the ghost moon, the three hills.
tomorrow there is snow.

*

*


and here, at the end of words,
the wall that shatters the words
that would shatter it, at the end
of my tongue too dry to break
old sounds and combine them
into sense, here i fall again into
that blood froth without relief or
prize. in the fear and the flailing
for meaning, slopping phonemes
against the windows, scraping
my knees on the danger every
which way, this stalled-out en
gine leaving me stuck with my
own dull shovel rusted to my
hands. i can say none of it! it is
clotted at the back of my throat,
a plug of concept tough as a
knot in a board, waiting to be
coughed forth, jumbled and in no
order at all. too much, too much
to say, to speak to others who
expect speech— i, who open
my mouth to try, and fill with
wrens while waiting for it to work.



*

*


what a taste, that metallic wind,
wet leaves, the almost-snow. i
have poured it all into my cup and
have drained it down, a courtyard
empty, cup upturned and on the
earth, next to your footprints in
cold mud. this sounds like a scene
of desolation but it is not, my heart
leaps to follow, a red-eared hound
in my ribs. i will be your forester,
perhaps your place-spirit, the tree
beside your path. the cup i drank
down, what was that, a metaphor
for human activity, a vestigial organ
longing to be played? whether or
not you know it, i am close, so close
to your breath, your back a haven
just a bit further on.


*

Poet and artist Jay Besemer is the author of numerous poetry collections, including The
Horse (Overneath Books 2025); [Your Tongue Is as Long as a Tuesday]
(Knife/Fork/Book 2023); Men & Sleep (Meekling Press 2023); the double chapbook
Wounded Buildings/Simple Machines (Another New Calligraphy 2022) and Theories of
Performance (The Lettered Streets Press, 2020)).  He was a 2021 Lambda Literary
Award Finalist for Transgender Poetry, and a finalist for the 2017 Publishing Triangle
Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Find him online at http://www.jaybesemer.net
and on Bluesky @divinetailor. Watch out for a volume of visual/photo collage poetry,
Dear Father, Safe at Present, coming soon from Steel Incisors, and an anti-memoir, On
Being Half-Imaginary, out from Overneath Books in late 2025!

Image credit:

Jay Besemer, Untitled photographs. 2024.