Poetry by Tara Emelye Needham

       Vincent Parsons CC




Jonas Looking Both Ways
 
Jonas looking both ways
 
Jonas conscientious
​                        at the crossroads
 
Jonas, evenly to either side
 
Jonas saving his life, taking his time
 
Jonas and his quinoa in Tupperware
            
Jonas and his backyard confession 
                   of a struggle with depression
    
(Now twenty minutes a day, he chips away)

Jonas, why are you on the road?

Why so to and fro?

I wish I could tell you: 
You’ll trade your worries for water tables
A state job, two sons, a buoyant wife

Just go,     
                       Jonas.     
 
                                           It turns out good.

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Tara Emelye Needham’s poems and essays have appeared in Poetry is Currency, Barzakh, GUTS: An Anti-Colonial Feminist Magazine, and The Riot Grrrl Collection (The Feminist Press), among other publications.  She has two tuxedo cats, is a New Yorker trying to figure out North Carolina, and spent a good chunk of her life writing and performing music with her bands mad planets, the reverse, and assorted solo projects and collaborations.
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