One Nail
By Joshua Brown
When the whole room has teeth, don’t explain.
Come here. All of us.
Thumb up.
Not happy. Not fixed. Alive.
Two jackets on one nail:
the closet trying to be a chapel.
No one has to earn the blanket.
We’re not missing.
We’re gathered.
The Second Dodge
By Joshua Brown
The candidate knocked and said housing.
I asked, For everyone?
The door answered: click.
People aren’t product.
Not even when the brochure smiles.
Not even when the lock has better language.
Housing means everyone
or it’s a room pretending to be a country.
Joshua W.J. Brown is a disabled queer writer, filmmaker and independent researcher in Toronto, originally from Courtright,
Ontario. His work follows labour, memory, faith, access, machines and the lives that institutions leave in the margins. He studied Film Studies at Brock University from 2011 to 2015. His recent poetry hasappeared in The Galway Review and Thin Slice.