The August Editor's Pick is Jean Jones

Please feel free to email Jean at: jjones138@ec.rr.com

WHAT IS IT?

When Orpheus asked his critics what they
wanted from him, they all said, "Astonish us!"
Can you do that? Astonish your critics?
Robert Frost claimed that it "got lost in
translation." And Sandburg claimed it was a sack
"of invisible keepsakes." What is it to you?
I would claim that the key lay "In the hands,
something in the hands, surely it must be that."
My friend, Andrea Young, asks me,
"Are you reaching toward being a true poet?"
What is it, Andrea? What is it?
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, regarding
the true poet the following: 
"The true philosopher and the true poet
are one, and a beauty, which is truth,
and a truth, which is beauty, is the aim of both."
My friend, Howard McCord, wrote to me and said,
"Poetry is whisky. Prose is mash. DISTILL!"
I still wish to be astonished.

EVERYONE ALWAYS LEAVES THINGS BEHIND

Everyone always leaves things behind,
scraps of it, for miles and miles.
A friend once told me
that Hell is the place
where everyone goes
to find the things
they've left behind,
scraps of it, for miles and miles.

LAST MOMENTS

Have you ever seen a picture that haunted you
of someone just
before she was murdered,
like those photos
of those women and children
at My Lai
before they were shot to death
their crying voices
screaming for help
to you
in the land of the living?

Yet there's nothing you can
do about it,
for in minutes
photos reveal
the dead bodies
where the women and children stood,
like that famous photo of
the dead girl
running with her murderer
beside her
her haunted eyes say to the camera,
"I'm trapped,
yet there's nothing I can do about it,
help me," and her body
is found days later,
brutally raped and murdered.

What are we to do
with such images?

Like the man from the Tet Offensive,
the mayor of Saigon
pulling out this revolver
and executing him on the spot,
blood spurting from his head the whole time,
or those films of that man
who gets his head cut off
courtesy of the Taliban
in Iraq or Pakistan
butchered like pigs before
our eyes,
some screaming for their lives
as the knife slits their throat. . .

What are we to do with such images?
Go back to church
and pray for God's will?
Rorschach, the madman vigilante
from the graphic novel
and movie Watchmen,
reveals to a prison psychologist why
he was known as Rorschach.
After discovering a missing girl’s
bones being ripped up by the killer's dogs,
Rorschach proceeds to butcher the dogs
and the killer himself.
"God was not responsible," Rorschach mumbles,
"the killer was, and God didn't mind"
if Rorschach killed the killer as well.

To come to the realization, as murderers do,
that no one stops you from killing
but yourself and some lucky breaks
by the police is weighty stuff indeed.
Is there truly no God?
Maybe.  Maybe not.
But if there is a God,
He seems unlikely to interfere
in the killing of one human being by another,
this same God who lifts no finger to save a fish
from a hawk, a mouse from an owl,
or me moving in to kill you right now.

Originally from Bandung, Indonesia, Jean Jones received a BA in English in 1986 from UNC-Wilmington, and an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry in 1988 from Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio.  Jean currently teaches Basic Skills at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, North Carolina.  He has had two books of poetry published by St. Andrews Press from St Andrews College, North Carolina; the most recent, Birds of Djakarta, was released in 2008.  Together with his friend and fellow poet Scott Urban, Jean Jones has had a brand new book of poems published by a brand new Wilmington, North Carolina publisher called "Shaking Outta My Heart Press."  Jean's book from that publisher is titled Tornado. 

Jean is also co-editor of the online poetry magazine Word Salad which can be found HERE.

You can learn more about Jean Jones HERE.