Jason Lee Brown
Jason Lee Brown teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University. His work has appeared in The Journal, Natural Bridge, Spoon River Poetry Review, Post Road, Tar River Poetry, Ecotone and others. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry and received honors from the Academy of American Poets and the Playboy College Fiction Contest. He was a 2008 RopeWalk Writers Retreat scholarship recipient in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
The Embittered Muse
Because. My name was never sung by anyone
and was forgotten, that’s why no one knows me.
So, no, I’m not Mneme or Aoede or Melete.
And, okay, I didn’t worship at Mt. Helicon or Delphi
and I’m definitely not one of the Greeks’ nine.
Yes, I do know Plato identified Sappho of Lesbos
as the Tenth Muse. Fine, I’ll be the Eleventh.
My gift allows artists to obsess over their crafts
without reference to passing time. But for what?
Where’s my libations, my academic ink no one reads?
Nowhere, unless I manipulate the fabric both ways,
like when I bend time to slow the ten minutes
before work ends, or when your alarm clock’s
ten-minute snooze elapses faster than a thought
about how summers since childhood have quickened
each year, each season the next, then disappearing.
~originally appeared in Pearl (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Why Mr. President Loves Soap Bubbles
“They [the iridescent colors of soap bubbles]
are not the same as rainbow colors
but are the same as the colors in an oil slick.”
- Wikipedia
It’s not for the science. The Decider
has no time
for complex thoughts
of mathematical properties, his hazel eyes
twitching side to side (as if failing
a sobriety test) at the thin, filmed sphere
of soap water
floating aimlessly
as the first thirty-five years of his life.
It’s not for the scepter,
a plastic yellow wand
he unsheathes from the clear solution,
his thin lips pursed, blowing, O,
as if in the middle of saying the word hope,
but it’s for this:
he loves the anticipation
of the pop! that ends it all
when he cups
the miniature iridescent earth in his palm
and bites down,
giggling as the solution
bursts on his tongue, leaving nothing
but the bitter aftertaste of dispensation.
~originally appeared in Natural Bridge
My Older Brother, June Bug
roots with the hogs in the field’s shallow burrows
and picks through the thick lawns and meadows
with the shrews and crows for those fat white grubs
with the brown heads that feed on the roots of weeds,
and he collects the bait until he finds a fishing pole
to borrow, though he rarely catches anything but a buzz.
Illinois June bugs usually land in July, but my brother
shows up whenever he needs a night or three of sleep,
basement hibernation, he always says, his head hunting
for the musty yellow cushions of the couch to burrow
his face from the rest of the world. He curls up, arms
around knees, underneath his leather coat, a brown shell
that never hardened, even when the slick black belt
blurred like a corner-of-the-eye shadow, the silver buckle
flickering the fluorescent light above our father’s head,
my brother purposely acting up, attracting the brunt
of the licks for our blue jeans with mud-stained knees,
live grubs in plastic cups, one dead crappie on a string.
~originally appeared in Post Road