Emma Thomas Jones
Photo of Father on a Motorcycle
Looking like a Beatle: bowled hair thick and sideswept.
Corner of sun catching cattails, swinging to a silent tune,
bike draped in sugar crystals—glazed leather seats, white
stripes bleached and my daddy’s face nuzzled in his collar,
my daddy’s eyes windows to his Oldies soul, gleamy
the way eyes get after hearing songs you used to love—
little darlin’, it’s felt like years since it’s been here…As a kid,
I barely heard my daddy play guitar. He’d hide in his room
plucking strings patiently, murmuring words to “Landslide,”
“Werewolves of London,” “Here Comes the Sun,”
would bow his head and sway like those cattails or a grooving
turtle, some notes missed or dawdling under his fingers
while he hummed in his quiet studio
and I stood outside his door, listening.
Good People
Tell me if the star-shaped mole is cancerous. If I’ll be the statistic
improbability. Remind me: how does the medicine work if it ate
my grandfather’s face? He always healed too quickly
and hurt again. Show me the bruises on my grandmother’s chest
after he beat her in the bedroom. Tell me how she hid them
from her children. Then show me my mother’s breasts,
where her cancer rooted. Tell me who’s going to die
first: my mother, my father, my brother, or me. How do I stop
being fatalistic? Promise me: I’m not good enough
to die young. I’m always begging to become a bad person.
Should I be this scared of dying if I don’t believe in God? Why
don’t you tell me if I believe in God? I want to know
what my grandmother saw as she slipped away in hospice;
how machines keep us alive. Why do I always remember
my father with a bowed head? When I, as a child, pointed
to each corner of my bed, promising my mother
there were good people there—was I trying to protect us?
Did something once protect us?
Emma Thomas Jones, also known as E. Thomas Jones, is a bi+ poet from Georgia who holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee as well as the recipient of the 2018 Lily Peter fellowship and the 2019 C. D. Wright/Academy of American Poets Prize. She has been published in The Southern Review, The McNeese Review, American Literary Review, and others. She currently resides in Northwest Arkansas. Find her on Twitter/X @_ethom