January 26, 2025
Jarrett Moseley
Jarrett Moseley is a bisexual poet living in Miami. He is the author of the chapbook Gratitude List (Bull City Press, 2024). His poetry has earned recognitions from the Academy of American Poets, the Baltimore Review, Miami Book Fair, and the Poetry Society UK. His poems are featured or forthcoming in Ploughshares, POETRYMagazine, AGNI, Poets.org, Waxwing, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere.
When a forest
burns to ash, the smoke creates
thunderstorms that bring flooding
to the now empty space. I never said
it was happy. We cracked ourselves
open and expected the cracking
to matter.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how our desire for (really, our need for) a clear narrative to hold together our understanding of things can be devastating. I’ve experienced how that desire can be easily manipulated in situations where someone else’s understanding of events becomes the dominant force behind how I understand the story of myself.