i.
When the tip of me touches the tip of you
it is only the tip of the iceberg
plunging deep and forgetting
the fear of the leap off
the highest point in the heart.
ii.
In high school we had a science project to make a Jacob’s Ladder.
We bunked school, Muhamad and I, alone at his house,
working all morning to reach the penultimate moment: connecting
positive to negative without any wire playing the root.
Then a flash, a cackling pop, running like demented laughter through every bulb.
When I looked again, the wires were gone.
I remember how instant it was: that bright bruising lick that wantswantswants—
it promised to burn down the house.
Jarred Thompson is a queer, mixed-raced writer, researcher, and academic. He has published poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in multiple publications, including the forthcoming Living While Feminist Anthology, to be published in 2020 by Kwela Books and compiled by Jennifer Thorpe. His fiction publications include The Johannesburg Review of Books, ImageOutWrite (2018), and The Heart of The Matter (2019) among others. His short story, “Changing I’s,” was longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and his poetry and fiction was shortlisted for the 2019 Gerald Kraak Award and Anthology. He has recently won the inaugural 2020 Afritondo Short Story Prize.
