Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“Pinwheels / spinning in spectator children’s hands—and / mine, asking the significance of outfield windsocks.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“It’s more than / your own parents losing / their faith in you, it is / the fact you were not / even playing.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“I cannot look at claustrophobic coffins, / cannot picture the dead inside, they are / always alive, wondering, why such little ‘ air.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“Nature and / Nurture pre-set my temperature to freezing— / crystallized the fun completely.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“What if / there is a part of you / burdened to carry / an accumulation of your / discarded past?”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“…let there be willingness to declare / rivalries dead. Just long enough to let our / guards down. Admit to broader love.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“When a cactus comes undone, / rot hides below ground for / who knows how long? Until someone like me / finds it horizontal, rootless.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“When you are sushi-and-sake drunk, / be not tempted by the live octopus / in salt water tank.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“What we know / about ourselves / will cause problems again. / New ones, as / spectacular as those once / entangling us.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“What does / it take to rekindle the language / of youth—run, kick, jump, lift?”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“Always / avoiding uncomfortable mirrors means / never hearing, No.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“We never know when / the absence of someone / will appear…”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“I want you to just / act your age, not your trauma size…”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“I used / new music to / restore calm, feel love, / return / inspiration to me.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“Had overwhelming desire / to one day be called, / Daddy!…”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“…land, / not touched by man once, / became commodity to be stolen…”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“If the heart / is the compass we’re lead by, /the mind uses repetition as a / way to adjust in a new pastoral / landscape.”

Golden Shovel Poem by Jordan Trethewey (from the serialized chapbook There Is More)

“To worry about reaching 80 must / seem indulgent to child ghosts, come / bearing witness to / what might have happened to them / if endings were written differently.”