JeFF Stumpo

JeFF Stumpo is a survivor of psychosis and PTSD, husband to a PhD chemist, and father to an amazing trans child. These poems come from two manuscripts he recently completed. One is a collection of prose poetry representing actual nightmares he's had, as well as the hopes and fears of people he cares about rendered into dreamscapes. The other begins with a place of doubt, cynicism, and heresy and eventually treats all spiritualities as true (still not real, but True) (he supposes treating them all as true is its own sort of heresy, but at least it's a beautiful one).

GOODBYE

the day my antipsychotics kicked in 

I started writing an obituary

for the supernatural

no more spectral fingers on the nape of my neck 

in dark hallways, no more

perceptions of demons in the corners

of my vision, no more

prayers inevitably unanswered

I was alone at last, in the moment

at last, had outlasted my brain’s bad wiring

I was living

the etymology of goodbye

in real time, how someone had abbreviated or smeared

God be with ye into God be wye into godbye

and eventually filtered the divinity out of leaving altogether

I had arrived 

at a truth, 

but,

sometimes, in the quiet hours, I confess 

I still take the gods out of their toybox 

and play with them in a quiet room

and why shouldn’t I?

it was my voice in their plastic mouths all along

RITUALS

[TONIGHT YOU ARE WASCALLY]

[TONIGHT YOU ARE TUSKED]

[TONIGHT YOU ARE CAUGHT IN A STROBE-LIGHT]

[TONIGHT YOU ARE LOOKING AT A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN]

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