Astronaut
Pilgrim stomach
burning rocket fuel.
Cadillac backseat
by the honky-tonk Blue Moon Bar.
Mother-of-pearl losing it in your mouth,
and the hours run out of you.
Neon OPEN sign: come on in.
You hum alien radio transmissions.
Igniting cherry-blossom flame pudendum.
Liftoff.
I’m floating the blood moon.
Lotus-flower splitting
on the pull-out couch
petal by pink petal.
Gravity in our bones.
Tonight.
Tonight.
I will be home,
my body a beggar,
you’ll put my hand to your throat.
I will lick circles
on your feet, your legs,
and all your copper-doll parts.
Jeremiah Comer is a Southern-born poet writing gothic-tinged verse blending eroticism, myth, and uncanny Americana with dark humor, surreal imagery and the intersection between the sacred and profane. He was previously published in Azarão Lit Mag, Il Detonatore, Orchards Poetry Journal, and Resurrection Magazine.
Why this Knocked Bleah Out:
When I say I thought this poem was “out of this world” I’m only being 20% a pun-master, trust me. I read a lot of poetry so I’ve come to appreciate those poems so strange, idiosyncratic, and satisfying in their ability to do what I haven’t seen before and to do that well. Jeremiah’s poem does just that. When I read this poem, stepped away, lived my life, I kept thinking about this one poem that couldn’t have been written by anyone else. THAT’S what I call a banger, this poem with it’s rich imagery and unique logic and transformation of the world. I know you’re gonna love it as much as I did, and I’m so glad I got to share this piece of art with y’all!
Interview:
1.) How does inspiration usually strike for a poem? I also like to think of this as the inciting incident of your work?
I’m inspired by real life and other works of art in equal measure. I’m addicted to narrative, metaphor, and imagery. Although, I think waiting for “inspiration” is really not a productive process. I keep my notes app full, which is the thing to do these days, right? Then when it’s time to write on any particular day, I sit down and beg the muse to come.
2.) Do you remember what the specific moment was for this poem?
I had to rack my brain on this one but the spark was watching the movie Interstellar again which reignited an older fascination with space travel. Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff and Philip Kaufman’s adaptation. Space Oddity by Bowie. From there it was just a matter of translating those elements to fit my pet themes.
3.) One of the things I loved about this poem is how rich with detail it is. It has such a lush environment as you move through the imagery. What is your relationship to sensory detail, and which senses (taste, smell, etc...) do you typically gravitate toward?
Sensory overload probably, more is more. I purposefully try to engage all five senses but in this poem I’m definitely playing with the visual and the tactile. It’s all about texture and temperature, with taste disrupting occasionally, engaging the sensual to create something the reader can experience rather than observe, if that makes sense haha
4.) Where do you feel the most tension in your own work, and how do you try to translate that to the page?
My central tension is between elevating life to the mythopoetic level and the body refusing to remain abstract. I try not to resolve these extremes, let it all collide and see what happens, liturgy against roadside attractions, the symbolic against the corporeal, sustaining that divide between ascent and descent.