J. D. Debris, songwriter, poet, and former boxer, is the author of the chapbook Sparring and the albums Black Market Organs and JD Debris Murder Club. He attended Salem State University as an undergraduate and the MFA program at New York University as a Goldwater Fellow. He lives in New Jersey.

Photograph by Karisma Price.

Beachfront

An Essay

by J. D. Debris

I’m not sure if this new writing spot I found is paradise, but it does remind me of “Paradise,” the sighing final section of Jean-Luc Godard’s Notre musique, especially the shot where somebody’s reading a David Goodis paperback in the shade. I haven’t seen that movie in forever, but when I think of its final section, I see emerald.

I see emerald here at my new writing spot (but then, I’m mildly colorblind; just ask my tangerine-eyed ex). I don’t want to give away my spot’s exact coordinates, since it’s been semisecluded for the few weeks I’ve been writing here, and the last thing I need is a brigade of poets storming the beachfront, but I will say that it’s roughly halfway between the Constitution Beach of my poem “On Future Rhyming Fuck You with Fuck You Four Times in a Row During ‘Rent Money’ ” and the ghost town where Charles Olson used to park his gluteus maximus and work on his Maximus Poems.

People on couch
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