Alice Jones: California Poets Part 11, Three Poems

Alice Jones

October 20th, 2026

California Poets: Part XI

Alice Jones

Three Poems

Birth

Unenclosed, did a gate open

or was it the sound of one bird crying,

evening light, as we made our way towards.

We had learned to be sealed in,

incurved, dwelling in fleecy fabrics,

eating what could be carried,

the crumbling clay figures in the corner

watched us with blank eyes

as we hurried around the rooms

while the avocados on the sill

grew though the tiny white bugs

multiplied, while the ancient cat

sat staring at the wall, a sphinx,

not asking the question that would

have unraveled us. We made do

with the least water, the least time,

though it arced into an unseen future

so terribly slowly that the end

lay somewhere underground

waiting for us to emerge

blinking, naked, skin unused

to contact with other beings

as the planets keep reflecting

their intervening nothingness back to us.

Crumbling out of the cave

the clay figure’s utterance,

guttural, ululant, the wall

of the diaphragm vibrating against

damp night air, the hard work

of being born, torn from the insides

of someone who wanted to hold on,

ancient, a cry issuing from inside

rusted hollowness, from whose mouth?

What meadow of tallgrasses, toads,

the body bellows of other species

calling to the you who had nothing to say,

the you who had not yet arrived

in the form of a someone? Fissured, gouged,

a hollow into the belly of the form

sounded a musical throb,

now held, so there must be arms,

systolic circuit, a beaten bell.

Thirst

Maybe it is you

whose house is now a pile

of saturated ash, the chimney stones

laid bare. Maybe the orange cat

who hid inside a fireplace

would emerge singed and mewling,

saying— Feed me, needing

your unfurred hands to turn

the can opener, to pour water

into his baked ceramic dish.

So clean, to be houseless,

to never choose which clothes

to keep, which papers,

the simplicity of dispossession,

when the only way to know

who you are is to write it down.

Remember: objects don't name you

anymore, and even your foundation

is the floor of an oven

consuming all shreds of being.

No things to mark you. No

things to lay their wooden claim.

Embers. Ashes. Barely

a self, listening, puzzled,

to the year's first rainfall

on the flapping dry leaves

of eucalyptus, which no longer

groan in the Santa Ana— the bitter

thirst would match theirs.

Family History 

Child

The child of imagination is what I want.

Not flesh and blood. The body

isn't song. It's just another piece

of time. No break from that tired circle,

nothing further. Not the joy of being sung.

He didn't summon me out of the sky

to be his muse. He didn't say Here is

my mouthpiece. I have no idea why

words choose one and not another.

We all have tongues and anyone

could sing, given a silent continent and

the need, like hers, to decorate blank walls.

Terrain

The suddenness— when empty

turns to full. Each one reveals

the other. Did I fool you?

In the shameful nakedness

of beginning, I needed clothes.

Pretending to be durable,

fired clay. Fool. Inside,

each shape hides its hollowness.

That's why I love a pot. Because

it speaks the truth. Declares it.

The unglazed cup is always barren.

Kind, the handle holds my hand.

Eden

With a long oak pole, I smashed the snake.

Its face collapsed like paper, no eyes

in the eye holes. That's how we treat

knowledge around here— do him in

before he offers the forbidden. Better

to invent the truth than learn it.

Because taking in means being hungry.

Wisdom, forgive my transgressions;

eyes, forgive my willfulness. In those

flimsy leaves, more naked than in skin, 

anything can be borne except expulsion.

Does that mean being the fool?

Climb 

I climbed the creaking scaffold

of their bodies, the two of them

joined gibbet-like, my exit out.

And in. I poked my head through

a hole in the sky to the other side.

My ascent kept them down,

language bound them, nooses,

my ladder back to paper.

With its solitary pleasures,

it does not bite, lies silent

as live bones stewing marrow, still,

as one curled orange dead leaf.

Nude     

Swallowed by the salt canal,

under the toothy Olympics,

I'm only one bite. A huge

peachy jellyfish. How far

do those tentacles reach?

I can't help stopping to watch

the clear mantle billow 

over lacy insides. It doesn't

seem to mind being seen, goes on

untucking its transparent blouse.

What would its mother say

to this display of pink flesh.

Author Bio:

Alice Jones's books include The Knot and Isthmus from Alice James Books, Extreme Directions from Omnidawn, and Gorgeous Mourning, Plunge and Vault from Apogee Press. Poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Verse, Denver Quarterly and Best American Poetry. She is the recipient of awards from the Poetry Society of America, Narrative Magazine, and fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the National Endowment for the Arts. A mixed genre memoir, Cadence of Vanishing, was published by Unbound Edition Press in 2025. A collection of essays, Psychoanalytic Listening and Poetry: Distant Music will be published in 2027. She works as a psychoanalyst in Berkeley.