Jellyfish

for Arthur Russell

I wasn’t prepared for your music
when I first heard it: your voice

gliding through consonants
liquid & voiceless,

your cello trembling unlike
a cello, the sound’s

edges sanded, weathered
by gales & saltwater,

a jellyfish loping gelatinously
in a vortex of vibrant motion,

and one day I mishear you;
now I find desire imbues it

becomes now I find desire
in music. Your mouth kisses

the mic, and we’re high
energy, an event horizon,

the boundary around a black hole
beyond which no light can escape,

no words: you’re so close
you’re unintelligible,

sound swells in the throat’s
cavity, vowels vanish

in the murk of mouth & mic
as consonants dissolve

on the tip of the tongue.
I mouth your words;

your words slipstream me.
I wasn’t prepared to be stung

by your music—this love.

Reuben Gelley Newman (he/him) is a writer and musician from New York City. His work is forthcoming or available in perhappened, diode poetry journal, and The Golden Shovel Anthology, 2nd Ed., as a finalist for the 2018 Undergraduate Golden Shovel Poetry Prize. A recent graduate of Swarthmore College, he was a Fall 2020 intern at Copper Canyon Press and a participant in the 2016 Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program. Find him on his website (bit.ly/3pPZEh9) or on Twitter @joustingsnail.