Previous Moonday Features        Current Moonday Features        Upcoming Moonday Features

Jonathan Campbell is an admitted son-of-a-poet. And as there are no support groups for this sort of thing, the vicious cycle continues. Jonathan has been known to write every day and sometimes in the morning and definitely at parties where he can often be found huddled in the corner, incoherent and waving a ratty composition book. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Jonathan became a dirty traitor at the age of 18 by moving to San Francisco, then surprised even himself by relocating to Connecticut a year ago. Don’t ask him why---right now it’s about 5 degrees on the East Coast and that makes it very hard to speak. Jonathan writes poetry because he has to. Why do you write?


from “Prosaic”

…so then the FDA allows me this:
I can stare out at my chopped river
and be unreflective, regardless the
thousand broken mirrors on the water
and a painting of clouds tracking the
sky. winter trees like gray fogs of
bones crowded along the opposite
shore and half-million dollar homes

whistling in the graveyard. the ground
a closed mouth beneath me; a knit
wound. the medicine a cold cold rinse
for my mind. but listen: I’m not fighting
I don’t love you and I’m not fighting
anymore…”

from “and Nothing.”

…they are catastrophically bored

the girl as she listens to the boy’s story, the
boy as he tells it. I got in my first fight

today this guy fuckin clocked me three times
but then I got in one shot and boom he was

on the ground. dollar fifty eight for the coffee,
which also has a tint too close to the snow’s.

I pull my hood over my head, step out into the
black squall and marvel that somehow the coffee

tastes like Chinese food, marvel that if I never
spoke again I think that I would still be alright.

© 2003 Jon Campbell

MOONDAY HOME PAGE (Current Features)
MOONDAY (Previous Features)                               MOONDAY (Upcoming Features)