Everett Jones

Severance

Listen: the way things start is the way
they’ll be. We pretend
we’re dominant, but god only kills 

animals. Hold a lighter
to your ear and tell me
which language destruction 

wants to speak—it’s no
illusion when the flame
calls for company. You are 

the heat in the room, the stray
in the yard, the snap of splitting
pure, white chalk. Give in.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Everett Jones is a student in the creative writing program at Salisbury University. He has poems published or forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Sink Hollow and The Inflectionist Review. He is an editor for 149 Review. Outside of the writing world, he is a multi-instrumentalist with a love for alternative music.