︎

Jeffrey Joe Nelson





The Voices

When the street sweeper comes
            an army of ants scatters for cover.
Flowers bend colorful heads
            & silently pray for rain.
A line of people wraps around the block.
They watch the steel bristles whirr.
Three fire trucks & an ambulance pass
            screaming like a child’s bad dream.
Buildings rise out of the concrete
            & keep rising till the skyline
                          is filled with a million voices
                                    filling the air as if an invisible ash
                               were slowly drifting downward
                           piling up in the streets
                         like verbal snow, covering
                               everything in knee-high drifts
                                     of voices.








Snow Spell


It hasn’t snowed in months & yet a painting on the wall above the bed spells S... N... O...W... in large
black letters above a blurry white field inflected with blue-grey swirl.


On the floor, inexplicably beside the fireplace mantel is a similar painting with the word C... L... O...
U...  partially spelled out towards the lower left corner.
There is not a hand in sight.


Without any warming a single dark & crumbling “D” is lifted into the upper right corner where it
floats as if a solitary bird
                                                     were attempting to escape the flock






Jeffrey Joe Nelson hosts the Greetings Readings Series at Unnameable Books in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. His Road of a Thousand Wonders was published by Ugly Duckling Presse.



Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market district in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.