JAMIE TOWNSEND

JAMIE TOWNSEND works sporadically for pay, but always for love. He is the co-founder of con/crescent, a periodic hub of creative mumbo-jumbo. He is author of the chapbooks STRAP/HALO (Portable Press@ Yo-Yo Labs; 2011), Matryoshka (LRL Textile Editions; 2011), and THE DOME (Ixnay Press; 2011). In 2012 he was selected to be a Millay Colony fellow.

THREE JOBS (from SHADE IN 3 PARTS)

work-hardened the former

weak aenemic flesh every-

bodies working again, on breaks

fucking up in the parks hands

compressing beds pathways

or words given sanction no

longer waiting for a public body

politic chosen to reinscribe a dance

of muscle & thought over futures

projection down avenues now

overgrown w/ intimate histories un-

earthed rootwork buried in

nerves attuned to our beds

growth our mass reconstructed

memory finally standing at

the end to form a living horizon

& to hear as shared tragedy! so

packed into Rosetti’s late market

place such strongly focused in-

dependence on narcotic sweet

displays beyond any belief a temp-

oral patina made pact w/ this

weekend’s alcohol a glorious para-

noid cave in of borrowed time &

debts short lease life drawing

tighter around a numbed ribcage its

muscle pinned back as example

– to be, finally, everything

          to everyone –

be spoken of in labor the

rest as sleep portioned

out of lost will & fore-

thought your presence ground

down to basic needs / shelter

first second concerns ‘yes’ / the pact

of limitless beauty forever living

among what we cannot have