from Over the City
- from Over the City
1
A child witnesses a secretlike waves. Patience &diligence dare her.Silver shoes in hands.The dense city for mento see & speak of her.
She floats in the diagonala tilt in the fold-up patternher feet read. She calls thisthe constant motion of being.It is beyond the borderof red lines and blue lines.
Flutter of something fracturedglass in the street. Silver light.Without wading, shespreads her hard resolvearound the dark. [End Page 196]
2
If (Then) a child understandsthe loneliness of her mother
a river from which she runspooling new terrain.
If (Then) she severs or morphsoblong, landlocked.
If an oxbow, which portion erodes(& Then what)—remains?
to face the ocean's staticexpectations. [End Page 197]
Jesse Nissim is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Alphabet for M (Dancing Girl Press) and SELF NAMED BODY (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming). Her manuscript Diagram Her Dream of Flight was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and a runner-up for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center First Book Award. Her work has appeared in 26, Barrow Street, Borderlands, Court Green, ecopoetics, Fourteen Hills, H-NGM-N, New American Writing, Requited, Rhino (winner of the Editor's Award), Verse, and others. She is currently a faculty fellow in the humanities at Syracuse University.
