Reading Resumes | Aden Thomas

Reading Resumes | Aden Thomas 

Cover letters of alchemy.
Leave them to the wind.

These lives are lists of things 
done in the light.
Black ink. White paper. So sure.
How much ink
when no one saw?

With everyone watching they juggled 
fire. Why not swords? Or swords
on fire?

Work histories?
How to become a court jester, survive
a guillotine, that’s a story
worth telling.

No references, but enemies.
Not memberships, but rejections.
No strengths, but dreams 
deferred.

Most of all, when it rains and there’s only sagebrush,
do they look for shelter? 
Or do they run towards the smell 
of turpentine?

What remains
is everything we cannot know.

Aden Thomas is the author of What Those Light Years Carry (2017) and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Deeply influenced by his roots in the American West and his current home in Central Texas, his poetry explores the textures of changing landscapes. His work has appeared widely in print and digital journals, including Brevity, Rust + Moth, Stonecoast Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Third Wednesday, Common Ground Review, The Avalon Literary Review, and Gyroscope Review, among many others.

Honorable Mentions of the Month
These are poems that stood out among the beautiful submissions we received in July 2026:
• “Time” by Bella Melardi 

• “Fading Rain” by Raju Vejiraju 

—Selected by Sharisa Aidukaitis

Editor’s Note

 Come seat, my good friend, I have so much to tell you. About those whose lives were too wild, too pitiful, and too real to fit on white paper. This is what it feels reading Aden’s poem, centred on the idea of how to document lives that were not truly made for paperwork.

— Daniel Aôndona