2 Poems by Justin Phillip Reed

Justin Phillip Reed is an American writer and amateur bass guitarist whose preoccupations include horror cinema, poetic form, morphological transgressions, and uses of the grotesque. He is the author of two poetry collections, The Malevolent Volume (2020) and Indecency (2018), both published by Coffee House Press. Born and raised in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina, he participates in vague spirituality and alternative rock music cultures and enjoys smelling like outside.

​Photo by Flynn Drew. ​

SO WE GOT THREE THINGS GOING. WE GOT SOME GRAPE JELLY,
SOME HOMINY GRITS, AND AN EXTENSION CORD.


Frequently people be impressed with some shit that I did that isn’t impressive
                                           For three hours a week, my nana in her usher uniform
         People like to fabricate nouns so white you can’t work in them
                                         No one rouged her cheek, none ran her or her stockings
         Like publishing
                                                   Or stepped on her tennis shoes, sweated her lapel
                              A cloth I have to launder once I wipe
                              my face has no stamina
                                                    Her man was dead or not your business
            I come to the table up, washed like I already ate, painted like I already
                                                                                                          slaughtered
              Baking soda somewhere seething among my bequests
                       Frequently people mean to look like (that’s they) money
                                   Framed by a wicker-back I’m spooning
                                                             Bleach and black share an etymological base
                                    sugar sheer as pestled glass from stainless
                                     Spent hours cleaning out, daydreaming cresting waves
     Stayed knives of a starched collar, whole moons stuck in the lobes of
                                        By the time we make love I’m exhausted and starving
     A stunning lover
                                                                                                       A contrived still life
                                  Who fingers cherry entrails
                                                                 With hive of muscadines
                 While two thick peaches cleave to their pits
                                                                                 And six-piece bone china set
                                                       A set designed
                       Daisies spectate from a standing planter box
                                                                                                      Xs and checkers
                                             of decadence rebranded as evident style suggest
                     Sprays of metal petals, unwilting
                                                                                 color happens at crossings
                              Madam, I came with the house
                    If you burnished all this we’d have a different conversation
                             I mean shit I could go with it, too




AND I LOATHED MY BEAUTY FOR THAT.


this was always sposed to be a story of carnage. copper stripped from a
basement. walls barged down the river, ruddy as the stain on the sister’s seat.  [1]
that day in the rain & the frame still smoking. in the chainlink fence’s revenge,
it split her sole. rust grit & brick dust gripped in her prints. brush hisses in
dense brown hush. horseshoe kicks what you tryna say (trap shut.) into

snowbank the cricket twinkle renders. bring in the big evening. in its black
continuity, we are outnumbered & maneuvered by memory.

her beauty excruciates, emphasizes the cardinally directed reflections affixed to
Marlene Clark’s face. we stop the motion of molten metal & beg it, frozen,
reveal us intrinsically. the child born (e.g., Rosso), as creation, is a solicited
solidification of interior crisis, a temporary & meaningful clot. someone
chooses ruin for the wood. from that shot to this, both a cross cut & rip cut in
which classical sculpture is an anachronism & a parallel becoming:  [2]

grave(n) woman / “wonderful girl.” “barbie doll,” the father calls the mother’s
portrait: blush background, collarbones, curls, tinted lip. easy, the sands of his
pharynx romance: waterfall, rose furls, cinnamon stick. this blood coupling’s

a because of me, its symmetry & fuckery. thou art with me & once fine &
ordinarily poured your good years into systems of profit, piecemeal pocket-
booking stolen feed. grief, grief, relentless thrift. you suffocating burgundy
apology.



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[1] What does it mean to me to be firstborn versus the first conceived? Little kidneys. I coax my fuel out of roasted beans. Often I write like a fossil, meatless & downplaying what died to get it done.

[2] Gunn blackens “Western” time, or Gunn restores flux to the Real amid a fabrication of narrative etiology.