Jed Myers is a psychiatrist, singer-songwriter, guitarist, and poet. He studied poetry at Tufts University, where he also served as Editor for Tufts Literary Magazine. He was a Finalist in the 2004 Bart Baxter Poetry in Performance competition at Seattle’s Hugo House in 2004, and won 3rd Prize in that contest in 2005. His sonnet won 1st Prize in Writers’ Haven’s 2004 Poetry Contest.
Your lovely head’s willingly lowered inside the wide angle of your laptop’s jaw, identity dipped into the virtual circus lion’s maw once more, but you’re not the lion-tamer—you’re caged, netted, long teeth tugging already at your neck. Like the antelope, throat in the predator’s grip, you’re limp and numb, mercifully anaesthetized for the kill.
At night the dead and wounded march
in utter silence through our beds,
through our bones and thumping hearts.
They poke us right between the ribs
with smoky fingers—jabs
and prods to stoke an acid burn,
A cast iron horse on a block
of oak serves as bookend
on the top shelf of the pine case
against the wall. The metal
form features a saddle, but no rider.