Dialogue:
Leslie Grollman and Jake Romm
Leslie Grollman in response to Jake Romm’s “Highway Blues” and “Maine Dream #1”
of asphalt eye
a found poem in Highway Blues, by Jake Romm
I am tar breaking
Bare
Dead of give
All give
To be (not)
Interrupted
Last and never
Sorry
Wet
because, eventually, every thing
In response to Maine Dream #1, by Jake Romm
Because you ask me to stake trees and men and ghosts, to hear fog
sway, to feel ocean whispers. Because you ask me to
discourse ‘like’ and ‘between’. I cannot help but conjure golems
and thunder, dandelions, the sky scowling. I cannot help but hear
grasses curse men’s clumsy feet. My hand is so hot I cannot feel
anything else. I shore-up a lakeside oasis in my desert knowing no
one will come. I encircle it with basketball-player-sized palm trees.
A lemonade stand charges 25 cents a cup, a brother and sister try
not to drink the profits, but the incessant sun auto-repeats its silent
warning. I run toward them. My feet leave no marks. My breath
sprints far ahead of me, vaporizing after dropping a quarter onto the
table. The brother and sister push a glassful forward. The insistent
sun’s hands lift the cup, pour the pale yellow liquid onto its face.
Steam rises, scumbling the sky as if to spell out surrender to those
still here.
Jake Romm in response to Leslie Grollman’s “THE RED” and “Thus the Arroyo after the Storm”
by the grace of God
braids of snakeskin
all unravelling: our homes, our bodies
depart never to return
erased
ash tell us, tell us again
how waves of butchered bodies surrounded us,
comfort us with an ordinary stench
when we dance, we lose ourselves in God:
whipped
hazed
gouged.
Thus: the
in a bardo
in a marsh
in a gap-stop
in a matter of fact
in a sad god
in a sneeze
in a splattering
in a slime
in a gloat
in a rapid
in a cup
in decay
in entropy
in the dead
a scar
a tear
a bartering
the sound of doors locking
For each issue, ballast asks pairs of poets to read each other’s work and respond in some way. We hope these dialogues will sound the resonances contained within the issue as well as serve to foster a sense of interconnection and community among our authors.
If you’ve been published in a previous issue of ballast and would like to participate in a dialogue, please reach out to our editors at ballastjournal@gmail.com.