Violence 3 birds, then none. Find the branch that is open to you. The storm has stripped each twig-piece away. So, you think that bare trees are beautiful-not lacking, but open to grey, the grey more important, louder than the branch. And your new tree: people think you can't see beyond the strippage. You started there. The Rumpus Published September, 2024 Nothing is a Body for my birthfather I wish I had the dust of you, a grave to visit. I'm running on your sea legs right now, tired of the little bits-not even leftovers. I'm a tourist in your life and I wonder: Does your heart have its own body? This sentence is not a body. Nothing. Nothing is a body until there are arms around it. The Atlantic Published May, 2024 Drag They say I have attachment disorder from years in the orphanage-I say I'm attached to dirt: to the grit of stones, pulverized metal from the slag heap, I learned touch from air, I fashioned love from strangers. Your families make no sense to me. My mother's the 4 barrel of a 409, my heart's dragstripped from the shredded tires of predators. Go ahead, think of me- throw the red flag down. I'm one you never figured, dead engine start on a quarter-mile strip, my lo-jack is the split/ the pull away- you back there, me running the distance. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 20, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. The Body's River A poem for Sunday I was born for betrayal— When my mother left me in the orphanage, I invented love with strangers. And if it wasn't there, I made it be there, until the crash, the revelation. They say blues is three chords and the truth— And poetry is long-lined lies and a deep dive into the body's costly river. The Atlantic   Published February 2023 Sanctified for Sister Rosetta Tharpe Dear Sister Rosetta, it's 50 years too late, but I love your high- heeled guitar playing, the way they said you railed your white Les Paul Custom like a tommy gun: gospel-wild and showing the men how it's done- double cutaway fins, your dress breathing red flowers hugging your full-size body, and I don't want to be redeemed, but I have become glorious in the halls of tricked- out love from the glint of your enormous necklace, hearing your soul-heavy voice surge/ flowers blur as your chest swells with song, I'm blown away by my own bullets of trouble. Sister, I'm saying what you always knew- that real is real, that in the nightclub wailing and the strap-on guitars, there's no happy ending, just the blues shouters, scorching, sanctified. Southern Indiana Review   Published Spring 2023 All work copyright © Jan Beatty 2024