The body replicates the body unfolding
tomorrow I’m going to put on my green dress
the light will taper me a pale green parchment
all thirst, all thirst and shadow, all shoulder under the cold lemonade sun.
I came to dance out of hunger . Tapered fingers like birds of prey
bitter, bursting like a pomegranate. I came to make your kidneys endure it
to devour you like grains of wheat, like seeds. A bird of prey on an empty
highway. In each body, shards of thunderstorm.
Set yellow flares about the walls of the yard
I came to walk in the streets. Make bells ring, shout
Bring four thousand eyes.
My head and hands are full of eyes.
This poem is from Jesse Nissim’s Diagram Her Dream of Flight, which was a runner up for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Award in 2008 and a semifinalist in 2010. Nissim is the author of the chapbook Alphabet for M (Dancing Girl Press) and her work has appeared in 26, 580 Split, Borderlands, ecopoetics, Fourteen Hills, Mad Hatter’s Review, New American Writing, RHINO, Transfer and XANTIPPE. New work is forthcoming in Court Green. She is currently a Faculty Writing Fellow in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.