LJCDS Educator Releases Poetry Book

Sympathetic Beasts tunes in to life, to its potential as well as its hazards and warnings, to physical and emotional perils often recognized only too late. At turns intimate, introspective and darkly humorous, these poems question everyday caution signs even as they lean into vulnerability, grappling with relationships, impermanence and the many ways the world can end. In this elastic collection, every danger is taken seriously, while no poem takes itself too seriously. There is a smile, or at least a knowing wink, for every foible of the all-too-human speakers in these quietly confident poems.

Mr. Jacob is also the author of the poetry collection The Seed Vault (Eyewear Publishing, 2019) and the chapbooks A Hole in the Light (Anchor & Plume Press, 2015) and Wishes Wished Just Hard Enough (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019). His poetry and prose have appeared in literary magazines, including Southwest Review, Indianapolis Review and RHINO, and in trade journals, including Education Week, Independent Teacher and the Journal of Media Literacy. 

Mr. Jacob recently launched Sympathetic Beasts at the Associated Writing Programs conference in Seattle. A virtual book launch party will be hosted by Next Page Press in honor of National Poetry Month on April 12, at 5 p.m. PDT. 

Where a woman with a salt-spray voice

might have joined you leaning at the rail

along the boardwalk, asking for a glance

by asking your opinion on the weather

you were sharing.

 

Her long skirt pressed to her thighs by the wind

as if by immersion in your thoughts

of the water you both watched tugging,

in retreat, at seaweed and the edges

of misshapen hearts

 

drawn by teenage lovers at the tide line.

She'd have met your voice, foreign even

to you in the breeze, with a careless laugh

of invitation. The nerve of her, filling

your memories

 

of a trip you did not take, standing

in a brightness your face never felt,

casting a shadow that, not being there,

could not reach out toward your own, laughing

not to be heard, except

in your sun-starved mind.

–Originally appeared in the Texas Poetry Calendar, 2022

Hacksaw 

The way he looked at you.

 

Said, what are you

busy about, buzzing

through these halls,

causing no end

of shaking along the walls?

 

Said, here’s a heavy load—

has to be halved

somehow, some way, so

how’s about it? His half

here, hers there.

 

Said, shouldn’t shake

just to see a man

shoulder the shaggy

burden he shares

only with himself.

 

Said, there’s no thing

standing so thick

in this world

these teeth

can’t cut through it.

—Originally appeared in Rockvale Review