Some Theories of Atonement

by Scott Jackshaw

I.

In the planetary scar tissue where I follow you in our last days together, in which we sacrifice clots of lawn, in which we did not become god but took on His bodies, in our body, in which we, in our body, expose ourselves, in the currents of feeling which liquify, in desiring which like our sex is secret to us, in the plenary of flip fucking which is an experiment in reading, in our therapy for root rot, in the scriptures where you learn to abuse, in our body, in our body which is badly read, in our body which is desiring, in which we index the earth’s pores, in our body, which is consumption, which is consumption.

II.

Here is touching a garden of crushed violet. Here is its stain. Here is another pound of petals. Here is a name for culture. Here is its clustering tongue. I want to be wire, a tendon, a fig branch, an artery, a catalogue of reticulate forms, an orgy, a fibre. I want my solidarity with you exhausted. There you fashion a catalyst for rot. There you breathe me out. There you love & break on the soil.

III.

Into which we folded our best failures of imagination: the catachresis, the vine, to crawl out on the blood, help my unbelief in the body, a listening post at its borders, in the body, the shape of its unremarkable terror, holding you, accidents without substance, the copula between god & love, how it felt to hold you, the bread, the winter jacket you left here, the wine.

Scott Jackshaw is a queer writer from Edmonton, Alberta. Their poetry and prose have appeared in The Capilano Review, Hart House Review, PRISM international, Glass Buffalo, Jacket2, and CV2. They hold a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Alberta and currently study as a PhD student at Brown University.