Selected by Hoa Nguyen as a finalist for the 2018 Omnidawn Revealed Identity Poetry Book Prize
City Of No Lefts
after Victoria Redel, Swoon
1.
Here: breathing
smoke somewhere
in the day’s
second night I wake
to find us. Corded
with yellow tape
the way an x-ray
tells
one story
about a girl
Here, the other
part I know: carrying
flung vessels
he roughs
exhaustion on
lips and hills.
I want none of
it. I want all
your castanets
breaking.
2.
Out there the real
child marches
flushed. You are
station, car lot
canal and blind alley—
hip to hip we’re
stunning. Hems
against skin
shores, houred
doorways ready if
not singing
then what weeps
for everything
not Neverland.
3.
Even now
the fear
this has happened
before. If not paradise
pronouns
then a collarbone. I am
all melting. Take that
I am afraid
of how Gaudi held
the world. Take:
I love his dark
invention of cognates
their tethered
sway and crushed
show-off blooms.
4.
The regardless
list is
lampposts
to thrive. Then you
and no absolution
still
like watching
the decline
until I’m
drained despite
continuity of language.
5.
This world holds
its breath for the sun
to come out.
The sun comes
out, to see
if you are
there and safe
are you? Now try
and tell me who
is ever ready
to brave living
to the living
Jennifer Stella reading: City of No Lefts
Jennifer Stella is a writer and a doctor. Also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Cameroon, she completed her MFA in poetry at Brooklyn College while in medical school in San Francisco and subsequent internal medicine residency in New York City. Her poetry and prose are published internationally. Writing has appeared in Calyx, Tupelo Quarterly, the Dusie Blog, Eleven Eleven, Der Grief, Pharos, and others. Her first chapbook, Your Lapidarium Feels Wrought, was published in 2016 (Ugly Duckling Presse) and her second chapbook, Letters We’re Allowed, was published in 2019 (above/ground press). Jennifer recently worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo as an HIV/TB physician for Doctors without Borders. She lives in San Francisco. www.jenniferstella.com