Clay Literary

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)