the blueshift journal
blueshift / ˈblo͞oˌSHift / noun
the displacement of the spectrum to shorter wavelengths in the light coming from distant celestial objects moving toward the observer.
September 2016
Ashaki M. Jackson, Ph.D., is a social psychologist, program evaluator, and poet. She has worked with youth moving through the juvenile justice system through research, evaluation and creative arts mentoring for one decade. Her work has appeared in CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art and Action, Pluck! Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture and Prairie Schooner among other journals and anthologies. Writ Large Press published her chapbook, Surveillance, in March 2016, and her second chapbook, Language Lesson, is now available from MIEL. Jackson is also co-founder of Women Who Submit, a community that supports women in submitting their literary works to top tier journals. She earned her MFA (poetry) from Antioch University Los Angeles and her doctorate (social psychology) from Claremont Graduate University. She lives in Los Angeles.
Find Jackson's poem "Gathering the Bones" below.
Gathering the Bones
originally published in The Rusty Toque
after Cecilia McCallum
Then the women wept around the body
wept ashes
The body is
finished
{s}wept
We are forgetting
The body is dead
{weeping}
The body:
around here somewhere
The ashes finished
We forget
That was how they ate a body in ancient times.
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