2020 / POETRY / AUTHOR

JARRED THOMPSON

ANNUAL MIGRATION
…

Where are the white butterflies going? 
Rising up from gutters, under bushes, in cracks of stone—  
where is the wind taking them and do they know? 

Bouquets of white-yellow lilt over concrete bridges
and metallic car-bonnets, turning heads skywards. 
Petal bodies crushed by tractors and jaws of dogs;
petal bodies insistent on dancing, stirring the air—
hurricane blossoms somewhere. 

Satin-soft patterns, flapping, tiny hearts working at a pace,
reaching for a place where hearts sheath and collapse
in cacoons again. 

I watch them in their swarms, trying to remember a forgotten song.

…

JARRED THOMPSON is a 27 year old, queer male, Johannesburg-based, South African writer whose fiction publications include The Johannesburg Review of Books, ImageOutWrite (2018), and The Heart of The Matter (2019) among others. When he is not writing he is practising his chaturangas, walking in nature or binge watching series.

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