Jerico Lenk

Twyckenham Notes
Issue Sixteen
Summer 2023

the night’s last train to paris, two hours delayed

we’re waiting in a rain like razors
& the station is empty: not unlike death

but more like not-existence, this
wallowing winter sky, this

keeping-close our own
aliveness in the razor white

of the trainless station lights.

next to me, you shrink
into coat, double socks,

the languages we don’t speak—

the blue of your kiss & everything
conceding to nothing conceded

to anything close enough to the quiet,
the turning-over of your breath

becoming snow as you lean back
into the soft tilting of night over the tracks.

JERICO LENK writes poetry, prose, and everything queer between. He alums the University of South Florida English, History, and Classics departments and the University of Washington MFA, specializing in lyric/hybrid fiction, adaptation theory, and un-straighting Western literary criticism. Living in Seattle with his partners, he teaches creative writing and composition at UW amidst broke-writer side gigs and ad/hd fixations. His work has received and/or been nominated for prizes such as the Pushcart, Best New Poets, Best American Short Stories, and the Walter Dean Myers Award. A full list of print and online publications can be found at https://www.lenkcreative.com/

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