[POETRY]

[01/23/26]

Marginalia

by Jake Hargrove

Marginalia is a better idea than it is a word
I like that there’s a word for all that stuff
in a used copy of whatever or that you put
there trying to prove something to yourself
I don’t like that it sounds like a term for an elephant’s
pussy or something just as crude and technical 

I started writing this poem because someone
had written “Whitman” in the margin of my book
and provided a bracket around the tips 
of two stanzas fencing them in like cattle
or making an ink prod to stick ink cows with
when they get ornery and so that I would know
what they were talking about when they said
“Whitman” instead of just leaving it to stand there
like a lonesome cow with no lover and no owner 

Or maybe it was just so they wouldn’t 
forget how Whitman that part of the poem was 

Here’s one I wrote when I was twenty-two
in a book I still don’t fully understand: 
“Can the natural actually appreciate?” 

There are songs that make me see painful
moments in my head like sci-fi brainwash
movies you can’t turn off There many less songs
that make me think of joyful moments 
and even fewer that make me see joyful moments
Some songs I’ll hear for the first time but
automatically be able to hum along 
What’s the word for that? 
Is it still marginalia? 

My dad told me a story a while ago 
that I don’t know what to do with 
He said he used to work mornings 
at a grocery store and saw a kid cut his thigh
open with a box cutter on accident 
on a Sunday when the place was filled 
with people in church clothes And I don’t know
if it was the time or the place but I always
imagine a bunch of women in fake floral adorned hats
squawking around some poor and easy mannered
sixteen-year-old approaching death  
which looks different than how he’d been
taught it would look in church 

My dad said the cut was so deep 
that the kid would have bled to death 
if the manager hadn’t tied a tourniquet 
around the leg with his belt 
Which the manager wouldn’t have known to do
unless he’d been in Vietnam which my dad
said had fucked his head up in a way 
that was hard to describe 
but that every once in a while 
he would get really obsessed 
with the labels of soup cans 
all being uniform in the aisle 
and then he wouldn’t show up to work 
for three days in a row 
and his wife would have to come in to help out 

If that was in a book I don’t know what 
I’d write in the margins 
“Shit” maybe if it was described 
eloquently enough 
Or maybe something like “Wow” 

Pissing on a fire is a sort of marginalia 

Wiping your lips on the crook of your arm
after a kiss is the type of marginalia 
you write but don’t mean people to see 
and even wince at it yourself when you see
it again years down the line 
Which makes it more like a diary entry
or a schizophrenic episode 

Suicide is a very extreme type of marginalia
that isn’t unsimilar to pissing on a fire 

I know a guy who had a really tough time
but said he’d never kill himself because
he wouldn’t want to make his family sad
and I won’t say it but you know what I’m thinking 

I want to drink a crisp glass of water 
the kind that makes a glass all sweaty 
and holy looking and really understand
what the word quenched is supposed to mean
And then I’ll ask the glass what it thinks of that
Do you think it’ll understand what I’m saying? 

Or do you think it’ll say that’s none of my business

I’m just the guy who carries the water

JAKE HARGROVE is from North Carolina and lives in New York. He’s the Editor-in-Chief of Cult Magazine. You can find all his writing at ceramic-horses.com