Jacob Griffin Hall

Selected Poems

Jacob Griffin Hall

Selected Poems

The Most Critical Component is Movement Itself

after George Rickey’s sculpture “Column of Four Squares”

With the wind at my back, I can’t imagine
that anything lacks
the capacity for patience. Yesterday for example
in the afternoon smear

the boiler coil set a drop of water to steam—
my body aligned
with every other orbit in the room. It was the movement
we’d all been waiting for. Light dripped through

the blinds, a matter of raw kinetics. The coil
grew deadly red.
For a moment I forgot my posture altogether
and set my fingers drumming

over the washcloth’s threads. Within each tension
an artifact. I listened to the planet’s slow grind,
the sun widening, the blacks of my eyes
in pivot.

My Primary Failure is a Failure of Will

I don’t believe
the things I know.
In this, I’ve found
my seams.

In my mouth
a taste of hickory.
In my blood
my doubt. The ritual

burning—
billowed smoke
for the sake
of longleaf pine

or the insatiable
demands
of the Earth, of
the hands

that take land
for their progeny.
All the ground I
walk these Georgia

summers is
fertile. All the ground
takes shape in
that shade of pink

that marks a wound.

In Order to Establish Perspective

In the old paradigm
I flung my body
like a skipping stone
against each ridge
in the Chattahoochee’s
wide mouth.
I worshipped insects
and held landscape
accountable for the grief.
As if in a trance
I ate boiled peanuts
and watched flocks
brush against treetops
as the dam released
to high sirens.
I came across a friend
sitting on the bank,
wet sand caked
to his ankles, a needle
in his arm.
The river fowl craned
their wiry necks
then shoved off
in one coordinated gasp
towards a pyre
burning over the pinewood.

Jacob Griffin Hall
Poet

Jacob Griffin Hall was raised outside of Atlanta, Ga. Jacob is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Missouri, where he works as poetry editor of The Missouri Review. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, New South, The Carolina Quarterly, New Ohio Review Online, New Orleans Review, and other journals.

Julian Leshay
Photographer

Julian Leshay is a New Jersey based photographer filled with passion for visual storytelling through a creative eye. Documenting social issues, capturing raw emotion, and telling a previously untold story are what drives Julian to pick up a camera and lens.

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