Jack Stewart is Ephemera's October Poet

(4 Poems & More)

Welcome readers!

We’re happy to introduce Jack Stewart, our selection for October’s Poetry at Ephemera. Thanks to Jack and everyone who submitted in August.

If you’d like to participate, we will be fielding submissions each month to publish one poem per issue from the same poet for the month. Each poet receives a $200 honorarium. For full rules and more info please see our designated post about Poetry at Ephemera. You can also submit via the button:

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Introducing, Jack Stewart!

Writer Bio

I was educated at the University of Alabama and Emory University and was a Britain Fellow at The Georgia Institute of Technology. My first book, No Reason, was published by the Poeima Poetry Series in 2020, and my work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The American Literary Review, Nimrod, Image, the Journal of the American Medical Association, and others. I currently run the Talented Writers Program at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

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Artist Statement

I have always enjoyed writing formal poetry, though in the last several years I have frequently drafted poems in set forms and then loosened them into free verse. My work frequently grows from an image, as the symbolic potential of common objects is high if they are presented vividly and in unusual contexts or combinations. My overall subject matter often derives from narratives, whether those be personal (such as “Sleepwalking to the Guestroom” here) or larger, more well-known stories from the culture as a whole. I am drawn to those recounted in paintings and sculpture, especially biblical narratives, as I see many of those figures as representative of the uncertainty in our lives. Rather than see faith in certainty, I feel it is often in doubt (as in “Drawn to It”), in the profound ignorance that surrounds inspiration. I therefore find metaphysical questions—but not their answers—in the work of painters as disparate as Caravaggio and Kandinsky, Filippino Lippi and Basquiat. The characters’ potential stories outside the frame are most dynamic to me, and I find similar intimacy in a still life by Vuillard as in a Holy Family by Claude Lorrain.

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Poems

Each issue of Ephemera spanning October will feature one poem from Jack. After each issue drops, the poem from that issue will then appear here as well. We like to introduce our poets first with a bio and an artist statement. We’ll send periodic reminders to check back in when the poems are available. This post will remain on our Substack, free to view, for the year. We hope you’ll enjoy these poems and revisit Jack’s page from time to time.

Poem 1 of 4

Sleepwalking to the Guestroom

I woke to the rattle 
Of the headboard 
In a room I did not 
Go to bed in, our guestroom,
So the flowered curtains, pale
Yellow in the moonlight,
The standing mirror black and empty,
Were not unfamiliar.

It was apparently where
I needed to go, not out
Of the house but to the room
That said this is not your home.
The headboard rattled because
My parents had never slept there
To know a bolt was loose,
And guests do not report anything 
But a good night’s sleep.

It was my duty to do the same,
Now understanding what the future
Would hold, the strangenesses
To enter and grow into, 
No matter where I would live, 
No matter what nights I woke to, 
What moonlight I would have 
To make mine.

Full poem appears in the upcoming Oct.1 issue of Ephemera

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Poem 2 of 4

A Cup for Ray
                 i.m. of Ray Headen

A quarter to six, and I haven’t
Even poured my first cup, but amid
The emails I will simply delete,
There is one with the subject line 
Sad news and your name, and inside,
The words pancreatic and prayers.
The birds indistinguishable 
At this hour will be indistinguishable
When the sun is up. The waves 
In the distance got bored over 
Their destiny a few millennia ago.
But I can barely move. 
I am going to need coffee with
Nothing in it. I am going to have
To blink back fate and what burns
Like glare. All I can do
Is let the steam rise, let the smell
In the kitchen drift into other rooms,
And pretend there will be other mornings.
I have no mirrors for luck.
There is no light I can breathe.
There are no books worth opening.
Sunlight, like someone else’s dog,
Will pass the house on the way
To nowhere in particular. And I will sit
At this table, trying to imagine
A useful vocabulary, forgetting
To take even a lukewarm sip.

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Appears in issue Oct.2 of Ephemera

Poem 3 of 4

Drawn to It

Above the waves of distant palms,
The mast of a steeple:
Hymns bubble in the belly of the hull.

I go sometimes because I need
To stand somewhere I can’t 
See well. Old air cloaks candle-flicker,
And language is brighter after I whisper
Words I don’t quite understand.
Have you ever mouthed something you
Were almost embarrassed to say?

Everyone needs to sit shoulder
To shoulder at some point. Jerome
Leaned into the arm of silence
And tried to learn the world
The way a verb comprehends the touch
Of a noun. The way the beginning
Of a sentence survives

Even after it realizes
It cannot express 
What it wants to say.

Appears in issue Oct.3 of Ephemera

Poem 4 of 4

Extinct Marble
(When the final quarry is emptied, geologists call that type of marble extinct.)

Certainly there are still slivers
you could inlay into, say, 
the polished lid of a box,
something that would show 
there is still some alive,  
at least in the imagination,
the way a fossil 
animates a dry creek bed, 
or an ancient prayer 
just discovered 
energizes translation,  
the interlocking syllables
so beautiful someone
would mouth them for luck.

Appears in issue Oct.4 of Ephemera

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Merci. Danke. Kiitos. 고마워 Go-ma-wo. Cảm ơn. Xiè xiè.

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