Codex is the first publication of Hand to Mouth books, the latest publishing outfit of legendary poet and publisher Charles Potts.
About the Author: Joshua Lew McDermott is from South Eastern Idaho. He was an integral part of the Logan, Utah, poetry scene in the early 2010s. Along with his twin sister, Jessica McDermott, he is the co-founder of Line Rider Press, a poetry website which showcases working class poetry. His first book of poems, Codex, is coming out in August.
Joshua is also a sociologist and is the president of the African Socialist Movement International Support Committee. His political writings have appeared at jacobinmag.com, The Hampton Institute, and elsewhere.
From the Publisher: “Joshua Lew McDermott’s first book offers poems astonishing for their range, both in their geographies and in their emotional register. The poetry is fiercely honest and self-revelatory, and expresses an expanse of feelings, from sexual ecstasy to scourging grief, from rage to sparkling joy, in language so clear and precise that every moment is rendered unforgettable, and immutable. Defying current poetic trends toward obscurity and emotional sterility, these poems mean what they say, and are built to last…”
I Read Your Poems in Preston
Honey you came out of left
field in a close coat and broke
shoes I watched you watching
your feet walking down that sad
street in the snow you ate alone
at the Chinese place near the
bookstore I read your poems
in Preston and went up past
Mink Creek to the forest with
my old man in our old Dodge
and he fell asleep in the truck
while I watched the wild turkeys
do their best to fly across the river
teach me with your mouth and your
eyes how it is you make a revolution
you cut off your hair you took off your
clothes you wrote a poem of hate for
your father and mother you took a
shower in their shame in the middle
of main street down on your knees burning
the sun sets via inertia and falls up over the
mountains the same mountains which
gave birth to me in some dark crease I don’t
know who you are anymore hiking in the snow
is like making love to a stranger I don’t
know who you are anymore and mystery
is the intimacy of god.
Another Poem for Roswell
I.
Autumn in Roswell, we went walking
under sunlight and black clouds:
Idaho weather. The weather in Idaho
is my mother. Roswell weather that made me feel
like I was eighteen again, hiking alone up the
Menan Butte, wet gravel under my
shoes, a jackrabbit panting beneath some
sage, gray and clean. The smell of wet
earth cold on my face and yellow leaves
falling into yellow grass.
II.
We drove to the Escondida Café every Sunday
in Roswell. We ate our burritos by the sunny
window in our sweaters. I accidentally asked our waitress
for a kiss instead of another drink of water. The warm
sunlight and the cold air. The broken wooden houses.
In Roswell you were my mother. It rained the day
my mother died, which is rare in Idaho. Not as rare
as in Roswell. The weather here makes me miss
you. The cold rain opens the ground. The clouds
are black, is my cold sunlight. You wore long faldas and
medias at the Escondida Café in yellow leaves. The earth cold,
sunlight mother, every Sunday weather, rabbits breathe.
Weather in Roswell in autumn is Idaho. I asked you for a kiss,
your lips were cold and clean in the yellow sunlight beside
the fragrant sage, wet from rain
in Roswell.
Roberto Clemente Bridge
for Tyler Esplin
Man, I’ve been waiting
for you since December 7th
and its April now. Broke my
head open, broken heart, some
airport delay; where the hell
have you been? The trees shed
their blossoms like fur, like
tears; I heard you hung
yourself in your parents’ basement,
your mother told me she found you
there, but I’m not sure if I
believe her, you stupid fucker, I
dreamt you came to see me last
night at something like my wedding
in a church house like the one I
grew up in; you can come next
December, if that’s better for you,
but, for reals, you really got to
make to the city, I’ve got paths
alongside the river where the
kids shoot heroin, I’ve got the young bartender
who squeezes into her tight cotton pants:
so much I’ve got to show you –
much to tell you – unintelligible things
that will be ineffable until we sit
down and write it out!
I’ve got ideas that’ve been waiting
up in the furry hills all winter, I’ve got
a feeling I just can’t get
out of my mouth; the summer
will be nice, here, man, I wish you
could see it, could have seen it,
I’ve been waiting on you since December,
would have bought you a whiskey with a pickle-back,
man, I could have taught you something
about how to stay alive when you
don’t feel like it, how to fight for something
when you’ve got no energy left, your broken
thrift store shoes, man, I can’t stop forgetting
it’s not December, the trees cry down on me,
the city is spinning down the flooded river
confluence like a bathroom drain, where a young
man, about our age, fell from the Roberto Clemente Bridge,
maybe jumped, showed up three months later,
two towns down, clean and peaceful from the ice water,
as if he’d died just yesterday.
Excerpted from Codex by Joshua Lew McDermott. This excerpt is published here courtesy of the author and should not be reprinted without their permission.
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