Juniper Cole

How does a mouth learn geography without anyone teaching it? Yours finds the smooth side of that mug without being told, mapping Ohio before you ever said the word out loud. Four dollars going to eggs instead of a new one says it plainly: that's not loyalty, that's just geography.

You don't have to have it all uncovered for the poem to be honest — "the trick birthday candle" line already does more truth-telling than most things people say straight out loud. Whatever's buried, it found its way onto the page anyway. That counts for something.

"In this life and the many next ones" should read as too much and doesn't, somehow. I think it's because you never once ask if she wants to be kept. You just say you will. Scary and a little bit beautiful at once.

Nineteen lines and you never once say what actually happened to him, just that there's a store you can't walk past anymore, and somehow that not-saying does more work than saying it ever could have. I don't know how you did that.

I need everyone to know I almost cried over a sponge. A SPONGE. soren, what did you do to me.

The trick candle thing really got me, such a small detail but it says so much. "The touch of a vandal on our tender affections" stuck with me too. I keep thinking about this one.

This is just so sweet. "My pretty star" made me smile every time it came back around. You can really feel how much you love them.

"Fed me poison until I shut down" is such a vivid, painful line. I can feel exactly how heavy this one is for you. Thank you for sharing something this raw.

"Late, and paying for it" — the double meaning does so much work and never shows the strain. This stayed with me all day.

"A house that runs out of rooms nobody airs" — that's the line I'm still thinking about. Everything after it is good but a little more told than shown compared to that one image. I'd want one more room in this house before the poem ends, something as specific as that first one.

"Nothing, said at that volume, is its own kind of noise" — that's the thesis and it arrives exactly when it should, after the poem has earned it by showing instead of naming. I don't think this needs anything. It's finished.

"Smiling was not what you did with a whole shilling" reframes the entire photograph in one line, and then the poem is honest enough to say it has been misfiling the image as memory. The one place I'd argue: "which is different" tells me there's a distinction coming before you've shown it. The lines after it do show it, beautifully. I think you can cut the signpost and trust the window, the sea and the breath to carry it.

This is the first poem I read on here. Sold me immediately.

"I never blow it out" — that is the whole poem in five words.