What Once Meant Now
Means Differently
Poetry
by Jacob Griffin Hall
One by one the stars
have been obliterated. I touch the gaps
between my teeth. I can’t believe how impractical I’ve been,
tinkering with smoke detectors, checking the time
for flaws. Listening to my friends laugh, planets caught
like clumsy orbs in their mouths, I doubt my conviction
that they occasionally love me.
This whole morning is a skein of yarn
unspooling. I watch it spiral from its beautiful
dirty knots.
Jacob Griffin Hall was raised outside of Atlanta, GA, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Missouri. In the past, he has worked as assistant poetry editor for the Mid-American Review and he now works as poetry editor for The Missouri Review. His work has appeared in New South, DIAGRAM, New Ohio Review Online, The Carolina Quarterly, and other journals.