Somewhere, a girl vandalizes the walls
of her epidermis, chiseling genealogy
with unfettered deftness. There is
no one in the vicinity, cordoned off
by her anterior limbs. Under a microscope,
her eyelids frame her as an imposter,
unscathed by remorse. Is this really
how everything is supposed to look like?
From the periphery of her eyeglasses,
a search party ensues, unaware
of the victims. Her fractured magnifying
glass only refracts dreams augmented by
quiet confessions, the vitreous body
of her eyes as erasure. Vessels floating
in aqueous humor. Unwelcomed.
She wonders if her optic nerves lead to
lineage, if she will find permanence.
Don’t tell her to look at the partially-
submerged portrait of achromatic faces.
She can sense a dawn approaching;
she cannot sense shadows that contour
into cartilage. Instead, tell her how the
moonlight conspires against the watchmen,
as if an admonition for being sighted.
Jessica Kim is a disabled poet from California. A two-time 2021 Pushcart nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Wildness Journal, Diode Poetry Journal, Cosmonauts Avenue, Grain Magazine, Longleaf Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and more. She is the founding editor of The Lumiere Review and her debut chapbook will be published with Animal Heart Press in 2022 WEB & TWITTER
NEXT >
< BACK
INDEX