Jon Leon across three issues
Jon Leon is an American poet and cultural critic. His books include The Malady of the Century, Hit Wave, Right Now the Music and the Life Rule, and Uncollected Poems: 2012–2021. His writing moves across poetry, criticism, art, fashion, media, and the surfaces of contemporary culture.
Three historical issues preserve distinct stages of Leon’s work: “Machine Talk” in Issue 21, “Sunset Cove, 1957” in Issue 23, and two numbered sections from Diphasic Rumors in Issue 26. The sequence ranges from fractured urban notation to compressed maritime prose and a visual coastal poem indebted to Alex Katz.
Machine Talk
Your yellow arm on my torso.
Post
cards of
museum
gallery salon
restless lamentation. hatchets
husbands new directions.
clock fifty years ago,
could we know of this turmoil.
Not to destroy it:
minister failure
“Who knew?” this construct
monument… ill attempts at prosperity
Across the street:
little girls,
pouty lips,
black hair.
When in
Las Vegas “I love you to death.” I called.
Sunset Cove, 1957
moontop______________________________grey coast
island to islet________________________________pencil water
antennae________________________________jump
__________________________________miniature catastrophe
orange sun fruit sun________________________:: mahogany beaches
play in the middle ground midsky mid drop slammed down on the shasta sea
happiness is a truckbox, 4 paper boats
o those
eastern nights
they’ll crush you
down they’ll crush
your mothers
anything the color
fandango
afternoon we drop anchor
and swim out to the concentration tunnels, once there
we spare glitter fish their atelier
i steal their striped sox
2 dimensional par
this is heaven
*thank you alex katz
Two from Diphasic Rumors
72
Airport strait riddled with bullets. Modular
coverings impelled the path stratum. STP looking
fine. Looks finer in 4.8 photostat. Several
grand palaces peppered the horizon. Were 5.6
coming on some royal flux? No, only impossible
wavers from the topper to helm. Chatty 4.5.
Complimentary 4.5 and steamy 4.5 latched onto
5.7 5.1 wish. GS ran into problems at the check
point. Cargo overboard, retrieval imminent. 5.6
clocked 4.9 at speeding knots. Sailors’ hazards.
73
The night is long and the days are black.
5.2 face is orange and 5.2 breath is hot against
5.8 ear. Boxing angel. Too preppy. 5.4 & 4.9
were embodied gold mines. Locking amphora
blight castors. Tool 5.7. Live 5.7. Shucks 5.7.
Trip around the voluminous highways. O cohen
around the bough of 5.9 dosing. To navigate
something like that 4.5 will need a tiger heart
and leopard mind. Sleigh riddle. Cougar 5.5.
5.6 jumped ship, flippers splashing 4.5 & 5.7.
Books and continuing work
The Poetry Foundation identifies Leon as an American poet and cultural critic. Fanzine records his early books and the Italian translation of Diphasic Rumors. blush documents his later bibliography and the 2025 collection Uncollected Poems: 2012–2021.