Renewable Resources
after Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
A knot of glistering ore. Fossils scraped
from earth. Armoranth, cool safflina,
silent princess. Florae giant and nameless.
Florae opening into polished springs.
Hearty bass and salmon. A bear paw goring
the water. The fox that skirts around it:
a copper flicker: horse coat brightened
by lightning strike. Struck. Like shooting
the blue, shining owl-rabbit. It bleeds jewels—
this, too easy a metaphor. Imagine instead
a world where pixelated atoms reset
after each loss: felled trees heaved upright,
rivers cleared of bomb fragments. Where all we do
is inconsequential. A stone golem repeats
its rise from sand, sprouting a familiar, obsidian
tumor. It swings its solid arm.
Utopia
after Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
The desert blisters: drink to stay cool. Pull away
the shawl protecting your chapped mouth. The sun ladders
up the sky while a woman devours watermelon, tosses
rinds into the canal. This town, built on an oasis: enclosed
with walls: it never changes. The same women open
shop to sell spiked fruit, jewelry, and arrows daily.
Until you arrived through trickery, no man came here.
In this fox den, you are the hen—you must learn silence to exist
alongside us. Fix your shawl. Do you understand
what happens now? As the sun trails toward sand, the sky
purples, loses color, then spasms blue. A seeded rind
floats downstream, like Moses. You will quietly rescue it;
deliver this green rib to the girl in town trying to grow her garden.
Love Poem with Predetermined Fates
after Firewatch
In Wapiti Meadow, the whir of a generator dissolved
silence into a moth-eaten blanket, and the sun stayed low, time
lagging as the machine’s shadow loaded in blocks, as if
this world was configured to build itself only when I looked.
When I spoke to you through the radio, I cupped it
secretively by my mouth, gentle, as if I could lip the invisible
curve of your ear. I asked, Is this all in my head?
I searched through jarred purple jams and Crisco, tossing
them aside carelessly, as I did most things. The air stayed clear
up here, but in the lowlands beyond the river,
smoke perfumed the cottonwood tree we both sat under
at different times—where I’d tried to hear your voice
without distance, the woods relenting this slippery peace
that flitted and returned like insects tempted
by the sweet smell of blood, or grapes. I had no choice
but to find us here: a mythology that was worth
remembering. I held my radio like I would hold you,
my paramour, kissing the receiver as I explained.
You told me to burn these indiscretions,
but I crumpled us in my rucksack and returned
to the watchtower, where I imagined sleeping
more than I slept. When the days exchanged
and no one could witness me, I materialized you
for a fleeting instant, your body bulging smoke. I ran
my finger over your voice. In one version of our fate,
we admitted our connection. In this one, we fantasized
about burning all these old, dead things inside.
I laid you with my rope hooks and stolen whiskey,
which you’d advised me to rest in the stream overnight
and drink at dawn, when it was perfectly cold.
Emma Thomas Jones, also known as E. Thomas Jones, is a queer poet from Georgia who holds an MFA from the University of Arkansas. She is a Pushcart Prize Nominee and 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, American Literary Review, NELLE, and others. She currently resides in Northwest Arkansas with her partner, Jami Padgett. Find her on Twitter @_ethomasjones.
Published January 15 2024