by Jessica Hincapié
Removing The Watermark
At the beginning of every book
someone always telling you
that they have taken liberties with plot.
List of wrong names, puzzled numbers
handed to the calf skinned boys of summer.
Their mask of horns an already rip.
What would you do for the promise
of hearing a word held inside for years
finally pronounced aloud?
Some people are so in love with stories,
they tell every single one
as if it were their own.
A kind of life lived with the need
to parcel piece by piece
for the perfect image of a blue egg
nestled, the smell of
ripe bananas when the baby was crying.
There’s anonymity in the details.
There’s circumference in the attention.
One day a lover reveals their fear
of being left like a skeleton with hands
resting on the treasure chest.
Fossil cast, smooth side,
proximity to the unrealized.
But that in and of itself is a golden image
you can’t pass up. It begs to be used
like they are the ones begging you to use it.
Certain lineages of telling consider letting
light in by fire. Only real way
to remove a watermark.
In a perfect world the dead
and the lovers would both have their say.
For now the living perform
despite their constant unrehearsal.
Hundreds of ways of saying
there is a blank space or I am the blank space.
The books all end with someone
claiming they no longer need to be loved.
Not even by strangers.
Not even in a ceremonial way.
Poet Jessica Hincapié’s debut collection, BLOOMER, won the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence (Trio House Press 2022). Her work has won her awards including RHINO Poetry’s 2024 Founder’s Poetry Prize, finalist for Radar’s 2020 Coniston Prize judged by Ada Limón, a 2022 Cuttyhunk Writers Residency, Pushcart nominations and more. She received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Texas and you can find her poems in Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, Narrative Magazine, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, and various publications. Learn more about her at her website www.jessicahincapie.com
Artist Adeline Jackson is a painter and writer at the University of Southern California. At the age of 22, Jackson embarked on a journey to encapsulate the ineffable beauty and complexity of the human experience.
Gulf Stream Magazine 