Judgement Day, 2025

 

The fossils burned down. People flew by

like a pasture of sheep. In my periphery

there is no savior. Psalms erupt

from the tinfoil hat and only a decimal

take flight. Here, there is no chaos:

every Judgement Day consists of an encore

and the ending is just a sad bonfire. A few 

begin breakdancing to impress God, but 

I know we don’t work like that in heaven. Is it true

that sometimes the chalice malfunctions,

that the trumpet valve and the mouthpiece

clogs itself with locusts. Today, everything

must be on the nose, considering the

limitless yard sales and the dropped suitcases. 

My neighbor is selling her picture frames and her Porsche 911

because none of us work in heaven; I think

that Jesus is still sleeping to Silent Night

and Mary must be drunk at a bar, how

the bodies pile up with each

clock-tick. So many fathers share their labels

in one night and all the nights before

then. Look: we’re so close to the ocean

I can almost see the salt rampaging

through the bishops. How holy.

Cemetery Litany, 2015

for Lola

 

It is night time. 

It is the night of the holy folks. Here lies my dead grandmother,

            as beautiful as ever.    Here lies all the eulogies I baptized in gasoline.

The guitar men serenade the mayflies as one last farewell. My orange lamplight

                        floods the canopy tents. It is night time. 

 Tomorrow I’ll write poems about loss

                                                &         on good days the dusk is full of lovers,

                                    the lantern oil streamlining the funeral visits. 

            There are too many antiphons. 

                                                            So many salt-tears. A candlewick elegy. 

It is night time

 & I miss the stickmen in Crayola pigment, the uncolored

sun.       Here is a broken film reel I found by the couch.      Here is more word fodder.

A prophecy: I will forget your smell. I will tell Man Above 

            to keep you safe, & I hope you are 

                                                            making some soup. I hope 

                        I continue missing you.          We’ll pass by

your burial grounds every day.           It is night time & we say hello

   like a lighthouse, like siren songs.               

 

Lola,

                        I won’t leave.              Good men stay grieving.


Jaiden Geolingo

Jaiden Geolingo is a Pinoy writer based in Georgia, United States, and the author of How to Migrate Ghosts (kith books, 2025). A finalist for the Georgia Poet Laureate’s Prize and a 2025 National YoungArts Winner in Poetry, his writing appears or is forthcoming in diode poetry journal, The Shore, The Tupelo Quarterly, Writers Digest, and elsewhere. Jaiden is the editor-in-chief of Hominum Journal and a Best of the Net nominee. He is currently working on his second manuscript titled Hymnal of Hourglasses.

Why this Knocked Taylor Out:

These two are just, wow. Some of my favorites I think I’ve been able to publish so far here at BRAWL. Each one carries its tone and image-work incredibly well. Not to mention how each poem has such a banger ending. 

“Judgment Day, 2025” feels so relevant and powerful and then in contrast to the Litany I appreciated seeing the breadth of tone from a single submission. We rarely accept two poems but when we do, I mean come on. 

In “Judegement Day, 2025” each selected image carries a lot of weight. You have the obvious biblical implications with locusts and trumpets and fire, etc. But you also have a uniquely contemporary lens through which to look at “final days.” Yard sales and cars and breakdancing. The mythic meets the present. Holy holy indeed. 

With “Cemetery Litany, 2015” the tonal shift is immediate. We are immediately met with the grief of the speaker. The form is full of movement the way grief shifts. The undercurrent of religion remains, the ending is a forceful look at what “good” men should do, and again the images we are presented with carry so much weight. 

These poems are fairly different but each beautiful and resonant in their own way.