Rhyme & Verse — two poems by Jax NTP

let’s make a list of women in power now

• the trees are so still they are about to catch on fire
• we wake up for something to do someone to become
• the difference between aria and warble invisible red
• an expression of empathy is to classify pain
• what does it mean if top five is the only five
• the unexpected happiness when the RN asks
• us to rate our physical level of pain on a scale
• from familiar to alien what we know when top
• five is the only five as in not us a circular stiffness
• limbs asleep what happens to a poem of resistance
• left unread classification as erasure as caged caught
• the expected happiness of our next shift nurse
• the opportunity to offer self again weigh in flux
• tinted hyacinth tainted feminine soiled not phallic
• how to file the unknown
• how to file
• how to un-know

july assembly room, westminster, ca

• the sun cooks dirt onto the park bench
• when did opting out become so alluring
• liberation from responsibility means
• to be excused from fault but isn’t fallibility
• a form of sandpaper even if there isn’t
• any actual sand used? book idea for sale:
• how to navigate the world as an anxious queer
• using only hypothetical scenarios indecision
• cannot be attractive because all we do
• all we ever wanted to do was the right thing
• chosen to be inducted opting in glass abrasions
• the sun cooks death off the park bench

Jax NTP holds an MFA from CSU Long Beach. Jax teaches critical thinking, literature, and composition at Golden West College, Irvine Valley College, and Cypress College. Jax edits for The Offing Magazine, By&By Poetry, and Indicia Lit. Jax’s words have been featured in publications including 3:AM Magazine, Apogee Journal, and The Cordite Review.