in the meaty hours
Poems. Prose poems. Jeeps.
The fire.
I took the rules that were shoved down my throat when I was a boy and I fed them to the fire. I took my despair and my depression and fed it to the fire. That long struggle to become some kind of a man that might actually be worth knowing, I fed it to the fire. The deaths, the deaths, the deaths; I fed them to the fire. I took the blood that I shed and I fed it to the fire. I fed the fire with the light of the morning, and I fed it with the sad darkness of the night. The pain that I created myself, I fed it to the fire. I fed my life to the fire. And those few tomorrows that remained; I fed them to the fire. The fire was my end and my beginning, my savior and my devil. And while I stood watching, the fire raged and raged, and when it was done, I wrote the story of my life in the ashes.
The meaty hours.
I had always been somewhat uncomfortable inside of my own skin, so it was that wolves took me in. I slept better with the warmth of their fur around me. I learned to hunt with the pack. When the moon was full I joined my family, canis lupus, under the glorious light. In the meaty hours we ran and we howled.
Pearl River. Night.
Suddenly shining a flashlight
Across the dark water at night,
I can see the eyes of several alligators
Before they slip under,
Slipping down below
Like submarines with cold souls.
There are owls and frogs
Making their lovely noises,
And every so often
There is the yell of a frog
That has been taken suddenly
By a water moccasin.
Nature sets a hard table.
Magnolias and willows make a roof
That is lit by the campfire.
Beyond that?
The moon, the stars, the universe,
And maybe Heaven.
On one side of the river is Mississippi,
And on the other is Louisiana.
Man has a need for borders,
But alligators don’t.
Walking to the edge of the river,
I shine the flashlight again,
And again the eyes go down,
But this time closer, much closer.
And if the sun was not the sun?
If the warmth of today wasn’t here for tomorrow, with no hand to touch, no breath to swell the chest? If the shadow swallowed the earth whole, leaving us cold, frightened, and waiting for the end? If you were not you and fate was exposed for the ruse that it is? And if another light should appear in the sky to guide us, to raise the dead, to lift some form of matter out of the nothingness that is the void, a new hand to touch, a fresh breath, to warm us and calm these fears; what then? Who or what could we become? And until then, what?
by James Lee Jobe
16 JUNE 2026
