Jake Syersak

Doubt magnifies an ingrown wing how a bird deletes sky, excising errata into err on the air yes yet automaton yet yes still sky. Because the sun can’t make up its mind, I’m busy troubling my shadow with the question of whether I’ll grow into it or it’ll grow into me. Noon is terrifying. This is my daily routine, sifting through what of is of & what like is like & it seems trees have less trouble. A tree is not amazing, though of itself is. That they grow upward the same way’s down says if any middle ground’s removed then I think I’m just watering Thesean ships with the water from Heraclitus’s swimming pool. That’s something. & nothing’s budding. Yes, there is pleasure in watching where a tree’s branch supersedes its trunk, where air greases a wing, where an ocean meets shore & that’s because it’s impossible. I’m oddly fine with it, awfully it. I think’s a gulf engulfs. I am. A leaving of, leaning toward a leaving. Where you’re reflected in waves has a lot to do with your position on shore, sure, but each successive wave ensures: nothing leaves exactly the same. Nothing leaves exactly the same. Nothing leaves exactly the same.

Jake Syersak is an MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Arizona. His poems have most recently appeared or are forthcoming in H_ngm_n, Ninth Letter, Timber, and Hot Metal Bridge. He is the author of the chapbook Notes to Wed No Toward from Plan B Press. He edits Sonora Review and Cloud Rodeo. Syersak has another poem published in this issue of Phoebe, which you can read here. 

You’ll find biographies for all contributors to Phoebe 43.2 here.