Funerals & Thrones

by J.D. Scott

"Like a tarot-reading Oblomov wallowing in his bed for forty pages, and not even doing most of the fun things that can be done in a bed, Scott knows that he ought to pull himself together—he can see the reasons for it—but he is in love with inertia. Inspiration leads to depletion. This is his curse and his cross to bear. ‘An unmade bed is an unaccounted sin,’ as he says in the opening poem, ‘Moirai Effect.’ It should be clear that this is very far from other bedroom poetries of the past, from the fuck-the-world-away boudoir lyrics of the English tradition to the grimly exhibitionistic verse of the second half of the twentieth century.

Genres: Poetry

Unknown Binding

First published August 1, 2013

About the author

JD Scott is the author of Moonflower, Nightshade, All the Hours of the Day (&NOW Books, 2020), a debut short story collection which won the 2018 Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writer’s Residency Prize. Their debut poetry collection, Mask for Mask, is forthcoming from New Rivers Press in 2021. Scott has also authored two poetry chapbooks: FUNERALS & THRONES (Birds of Lace Press, 2013) and Night Errands (YellowJacket Press, 2012), which was the winner of the 2011 Peter Meinke Prize. Scott’s prose and poems has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Salt Hill, Sonora Review, The Pinch, Spoon River Poetry Review, Bayou, and elsewhere. Other writing has been featured in the Best American Experimental Writing and Best New Poets anthologies. Scott’s accolades include being awarded a Lambda Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellowship, attending the Poetry Foundation’s inaugural Poetry Incubator, and being awarded residencies at the Millay Colony, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, and Writers at the Eyrie. Scott holds an MFA from the University of Alabama, where they edited and designed for Black Warrior Review.

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Because I love the cover so much, I've had this chapbook on display in my apartment for some months. I picked it up today to revisit and realized -- I had not read it yet. What! So, finally spent some time with it and three cheers for delayed gratification. This was a good followup to reading a Tamora Pierce book, actually, as both are full of magick and mayhem, in RATHER different ways, of course. FUNERALS & THRONES is a chapbook to gift to anyone interested in tarot, astrology, occultic and mythological realms. So much symbol here, embodied, animated, personalized.

"The High Priestess (III)"

In a notebook covered in cardinals, there's a journal entry
about you, who exists only as a name, someone
I may or may not have touched. Then, out of ink,
out of margins, you come back in pieces:
a tortoise shell hair comb. Thin arms.
And finally, memory no longer fighting,
leather shoes, green eyes. Your mouth.