Jeremy Rock
Transcontinental
And I know you are out there, tasting
acacia gum and starch, fifth in line
at your local Postal trying to speak with cardboard
a cipher so elaborate it cannot fit
in a phone line. You are packing used
underwear, a non-rewritable disc labeled for when
I can’t (be there), and my sweat-
shirt you’ve taken to sleep for a week. The tape
smells of old book binding, the flat-rate pennies
of a blood older than the address
to which you send. A stamp still wet with your spit promises
eternity, but you know better. You know domestic, you know
priority, but when you tell the clerk non-machinable hand-
sorted, you wonder if you ask too much.
Jeremy Rock is from Frederick, Maryland, and is currently a student at Salisbury University. He has work published or forthcoming in Waccamaw, The Shore, Stonecoast Review, The New Mexico Review, and elsewhere.
