The small and powerful black speakers exhale eighth and quarter notes from the first and third tracks off her oldest album. Stretching the time like yoga instead of a clock’s achy twitches, the bluesy songs feel more like a soft green. The first and third tracks from her oldest album don’t have the highest recording […]
Ethnography, Chapter One: Meeting the Savages
We were huddled under the canopy when the bees arrived. I had not invited them and I thought them rude for not calling first. My phone had all its bars, so they really had no excuse. It was festival camping, though, so perhaps I was simply unaccustomed to the informality of this culture. The boys […]
Smuggling in the Psychiatric Hospital
Coffee in the lunchroom never cooled in time for us to drink it until after we had to leave to go back upstairs to the ineffective decaf. Chuck’s drugged laughter, deep as comfort, shook at the savory lewd humor circling our table at lunch, stained pink in Rorschach frames from the day before when we […]
Hookah
Bubbles fight for air at the neck of my base, pushing each other down to get ahead, pleading for help through the blue and gold glass, coals stabbing the shisha with heat, two brother hoses passed around like cheap prostitutes, pimped out by my silver rotating stand, one leaking smoke from a wound inflicted by […]
Dad’s Nail Clippers
Same worn leather pouch they came in nearly two decades ago. The largest clippers, the ones for toes, sit in the middle with the medium and small ones at their side, awaiting their medals. Dad started keeping his trophies from his years of Tae Kwon Do locked away from us. Never missing his classes, he’s […]
Watch
Driving home in the dark. Watch you steer us through the midnight. Your relaxed face unaware stops my thoughts. Subtle blue dashboard light reveals the beautiful curves of your cheeks, nose, eyelashes. Damn, those eyelashes. They make me jealous. Following the trail down your forehead… nose… lips. Lips. God, I love your face caught in […]
Arrival
“And it was at that age… Poetry arrived in search of me.” -Pablo Neruda Curiosity is inherent in every child, but for me, only the aimless and blind search for understanding. flammable knowledge lay all around me, curiosity an unlit match. The magic began when curiosity ignited. A small spark for a moment, then […]
The Season Stranger
Summer intruded on the winter night. No leaves shook in the trees, but the streetlights on the sidewalks still belonged to the summer calm, quietly enticing the sleepless to a walk that might ease their troubled minds. There was a winter wind that, instead of hindering the unlucky passersby, now played lightly with the tips […]
Until Construction is Completed…
While I’m working on this site (www.JAHSoulWorks.com), feel free to browse my old site at www.JAHSoulWorks.wix.com/home for my writings and videos, which aren’t up here yet. And yes, unfortunately you need the entire clunky domain to get there (hence why I am creating this site).
Tattooed Art
During my short time in Charlotte, NC, I was commissioned to do a piece for my supervisor, based on his and his girlfriend’s astrological signs. I found the inspiration in some tattoos online. They then decided to get it tattooed on their own forearms, which was a shocking honor.