Inching our hand
along each other’s backs,
like wary caterpillars,
through the Good Thing
Gallery, we happen
upon, a charcoal drawing
of a sculpture of a woman
looking at a photograph
of a toy theatre
in which a marionette
is looking at a charcoal
drawing of a
sculpture of a woman
looking at a+++,+ looking
at a +++,+looking
at a
++++,+Etta
James
in the background
singing “Your Good Thing
(Is About to End)”

Jake Bauer serves as Poetry Editor of The Journal. His poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Forklift, Ohio; Threepenny Review; inter|rupture; DIAGRAM; The Bennington Review; and Thrush; among others.