Scott Alexander Jones

from Here at the End of All Things one false stepon the precipice& I’ll slide to my death—use my obituaryto get a fire started as I dig for my pendeep in my army satchelto write about howthe sun sets,the sun sets a child climbswhat’s left of the iron frameof the shipwreck—the centuries we spendunbecoming walking into townwith The Tibetan Book of the Deadin my headphones—a dotted line of geeseperforate the sky waking from a napmy cap hides the beach from me—for a momentthe flipped-over shoes are youdead & buried in the sand sky burialfor the eyeless sea lionhere at sea level—birds dive-bombthe closer I approach eating lemonswhile the ravens can’t puncturethe sea lion’s skin—a seagull stalks melike I’ve got any answers SCOTT ALEXANDER JONES is the author of the chapbooks “That Finger on Your Temple is the Barrel of My Raygun” (Bedouin Books, 2013) and “One Day There Will Be Nothing to Show That We Were Ever Here” (Bedouin Books, 2009). His poems have appeared in over fifty journals, including Roanoke Review, Third Coast, and Tribeca Poetry Review. He holds an MFA from The University of Montana, where he co-founded the literary journal Zerø Ducats. He has won a variety of travel grants and literary awards, including the 2011 Nancy Dew Taylor Award for Poetry for an excerpt of his long poem, “elsewhere.” Additionally, he was Writer-in-Residence at The Montana Artists Refuge during October of 2009. Having lived in Seattle, Austin, Portland, and Wellington, New Zealand, he now lives in Lawrence, Kansas, where he is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas. In 2014, Black Lawrence Press will publish his first full-length collection of poetry, “elsewhere.”