Poetry by JL Rosser

Published by betweenthehighway

2.25” x 51”

Thermal printing on receipt paper

Edition of 300

2024

They say pick a tree to grow old with, yet leaves still gather like withered lives around you, and even that tree—once rooted fast in your memory— now falls into the mire among its rotting children, remaining only to be seen across the frenzied moments of this search for “a life stripped away.”

     The dogwood blooms droop
      like sleeping children over
      the water, and the twigs
      droop like it hurts to carry
      them. The roots of the trunk
      spread out like Papa when
      he walked too drunk. It’s
      branches spindly  and knobby
      as his twiggy arms gorged
      on bursitis. Liver stuck out
      like the front of an 85’
      Silverado. Legs like Marlboro
      100s but this one woman;
      she takes photos at funerals
      to show them to the family,
      so there’s Papa all folded up
      like a paper plane that didn’t
      fly far enough. Polaroids
      ain’t useful. This is no time
      to be useful. This is time
      to sing badly in the woods
      and scare deer.

JL is a queer poet living in Georgia. Currently, most of the poems they write are about Yugioh cards and Youtube videos.