Editor’s Introduction
This week I’m sharing two poems by Jake Reynolds, taken from his upcoming pamphlet We Both Say. There were so many poems in this pamphlet I wanted to feature here, but ultimately that opening statement ‘We need more flexible aubades’ seemed to be at the heart of the pamphlet.
We Both Say will be coming out in May 2026 from the small poetry press Broken Sleep Books. Broken Sleep is doing an impressive job in bringing outstanding poetry to new readers, and were the well-deserved winners of the Michael Marks Publishers’ Award. If you don’t already know their work, take a look.
Two poems by Jake Reynolds
THE AGE OF SPECTACLE
We need more flexible aubades.
When you wake and I am sleeping,
what is there to say?
Someone beloved
has died in my country
and it’s quite exciting.
You don’t say? Someone
in my country was born
and it’s all anyone’s talking about.
Spooky,
we both say.
That’s quite a trek for just one ghost
(not that we believe in those things,
pragmatists that we are).
Later in our bulletins we trade some superstitions.
One of us walks through rain
to shake off the mood of the departed.
HEX / PANACEA
We shan’t exacerbate the sickening
by sticking our fingers in our mouths
before it happens: we’ll spit into a petri dish
then touch like we’re looking for lenses
and return to the white room for one
to pop the prop thermometer into their
mouth, red Sharpie fired up, askew
like a wheat stalk, t-shirt drawn
for the application of out, out
in traced circles on the stomach
until we’re laughing for such a long time
the spit dries. And now that we have
rehearsed and undone the cruelty
of governance, we can draw this curtain.
