Apricity Magazine Apricity Magazine

*First Published in Defunct Magazine*

Would you believe the world ends and starts in Jim Morrison’s motel room
in West Hollywood—

I won’t say again that staring at the stars is like staring
into the past       because it’s overstated
                                                                               but also
           it’s one of those stunning things
        I’m furious I didn’t say first—
                                                                   so the sky glows again
with ageless graffiti
   belonging to tonight
as much as to its first tender moments
                       perhaps as far back
                       as the big bang
or 1971—
                                      I’m trying, Jim
someone named John wrote this in the sky
                               twice,
         an ode to him—
                          Jim—          a promise
                                           to whoever is looking up
                                           right now—


I try to picture him—
                           John—         the sadness


                                            of his smile, the wars he made it through,
                                        that way he would hold a pen
                                        to write         something
                                                     that wrote
                                                      itself;
      a melancholy ghost,
                                          hopeful enough
                                        to have connected the most blinding stars
              so that when I close my eyes
              I can place his blazing words anywhere:

I’m trying Jim i’m trying Jim I’m
trying jim I’m tryig Jm
     I    ’m trying Ji m I’m trying J
im I’m trying john I’ m
             trying jiim — —
I have always thought, or at least I have thought recently,
              that when the world ends
              everything will
                                  collapse
              and fold in on itself
                      as one                           like it was before,
                                                smaller than a pinhead,
   and it is comforting to realize that John would think this, too:
that the stars were flaming when I got here,
         but I also ignited
                                                  all of them;
I’m trying,
I’ve been trying this whole time,
I really have—
         will you tell him? will you tell him for me, Jim?
tell him so he remembers
tell him so he can
                        spray–paint the sky
                                                                           with me
                                                                            again—

About the Author

Danielle Gennaro earned an MFA from Manhattanville College and has studied at the University of Wales with the Dylan Thomas International Summer School. She regularly takes workshops with Brooklyn Poets and she currently teaches music and works as a theatre technical director at a high school in Connecticut. She has previously been published in Oberon Poetry Magazine, Wizards in Space Literary Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Toho Journal Online, The Raw Art Review, Silver Rose Magazine, Lotus-eater Magazine, and Defunct Magazine.