Three Poems From Jason Heroux

On This Street

In the morning the mirror glows
like a brush after grooming the sun.

But at night it wanders off
like a horse unhitched
from the room’s wagon.

On this street the houses
are fussy eaters.
Windows spit out the light
and feed it
to the dog under the table.

The tiny stars
reflected in puddles
look dirty as vitamins
fallen under the fridge.

Unemployed trees
pick their own pockets.
Statues with stomach ulcers
cough up other people’s blood.

On this street it’s hard to tell
if it’s day or night.

When it gets dark
the light bulbs hatch
in the lampshade’s nest
and cry until they’re fed.


Little Nails

We’re like little nails sticking out of the wall.
And the wall is a field of freshly fallen snow.
We’ve only taken one step and we’re already
lost in the woods.
We don’t know what hangs upon us.
We don’t know what needs us to be ourselves.


Today


Today arrived
on trembling crutches
of birdsongs looking
for some place to rest.

It arrived carrying
the sky under its arm.

Like a broken suitcase
tied shut with a string
of chimney smoke.



Jason Heroux lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. His poems were selected for Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets and he is the author of a poetry collection titled Memoirs of an Alias. His novella, Hello In There, is scheduled to appear in Particle and Wave: A Mansfield Omnibus of Electro-Magnetic Fiction later this year.