Clay Literary featured three of my poems in their online zine, ‘Raven.’
Author bio: Jason Sebastian Russo is a writer, composer, musician, and digital marketer based in Brooklyn. He's recorded and toured with bands that include Mercury Rev, Kevin Devine, Hopewell, Pete International Airport, Nicole Atkins, and Guiding Light, which releases a new album in January 2021. He’s also working on a novel and currently exploring forms that combine poetry, music, and technology, as well as scoring podcasts for the New York Times and others.
Honk (excerpt)
Written by Jason Sebastian Russo
if being poor is a full-time job
if you’re starting to look like your van
or it’s starting to look like you
if your boss is an algorithm
honk
if you’re a slave to freedom
if you thought love was a feeling
if good things are just things that stop at the right time
if you’re a bird that loves its cage
if your body feels like a pair of shoes
that are too small
honk if you’re honking
honk
if you’ll try anything way more than twice
if you're happier than you feel
if you can't or hate to honk
if the problem with ideas is the people having them
if your body is a tomb
or a clock
or a time machine
if the next brooklyn is within as is the real wifi
honk if the way the skin is wrapped around your skull buys you privilege
if you're probably a computer programmed to think it's not a computer if it's always the past
or
you're horny for truth
& you lost your virginity on the premises of your catholic high school
honk if the molecules that decide they are you
think they're honking
honk
if god exists
but we don’t
honk if the world is a mask for the truth
or, if eating percocet out of the toilet killed people, you'd have been dead in 1999
&
if it's not death's fault
honk if your fate is to reject destiny
&
if god isn't a noun
honk
if love can only be mutual
like color is light reflected back at you
honk if music wants to be played
if the most self-destructive part of you claims that the most self-destructive part of you is the part of you that is attracted to self-destructive people
honk if we lack the analogies
if love made us so we can make it
or is hard for a reason
or literally never waits
if you are plural but we are not
if the child you never had is you
if your father is a folder of contradictory emails if your parents are a hotel ice maker next to a vending machine
& murderers
in reverse
honk if we're good
honk if we get closer, but the moon stays the same size
or if a giant sadness has come between us
or if I've already forgiven you for crimes you've yet to commit
honk if all you inherited was a look of horror
or if it’s entirely possible that you’ll die
of astonishment
(Listen to this poem's audio HERE ON SOUNDCLOUD)