Jill Khoury

trance while grieving

 ​                                                                                    ​​          i’m at the end of my street & it smells
like brimstone / i’m in a coffee shop & it smells like winter / i’m in my therapist’s office & it
smells like coffee / i’m in my bathroom sitting on the purple rug & the fan goes
waaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh  / i can feel my heartbeat in my neck spine hips feet throb /
/ o pain i wouldn’t miss you at all / can you leave my body like ether & what will motivate
you to stay gone /          
 
                                                                                        i’m perched on a high table in a lobby of an
art-deco hotel in chicago / my carapace is shiny and charming / two women below me
converse & one keeps saying pop psychology pop psychology / pink bubbles burst in my drink /
they rise to the surface and burst / the other woman says over and over long story short long
story short long story short & i think maybe they are birds / i fly to the ceiling and my feet taste
copper / they are birds in fact / the copper makes my feet fizz / o wait that’s only a
neuroma
 
 ​                                                                                    ​​          ​i’m standing on a bench at a bus stop
in pittsburgh / my feet make large prints in the snow / everything’s covered in snow snow
bench snow roof snow wall snow persons / i’m so warm trapped under the snow / max
texts me aaaaa no interwebz {weeping emoji} and i want to tell him how i almost wept several
times walking to the coffee shop to meet him / the sadness so heavy / like a back full of
​snow / like limbs crusted in snow / like a head full of snow / motivation frozen / and you
glisten all along my spine hello lover  / the way you clap your hands to startle / your gratuitous
laughter /
 
/ i’m nowhere
/ sadness punches me in the face
/ i remember when i carried this burden and kept it cute
/ i will treat myself with the kindness of a mother
/ *not my mother
/ **rather the archetypical mother
/ i can’t even get affirmations right
/ you have to use words you actually believe in

--
Jill Khoury writes on gender, disability, and embodied identity. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University and edits Rogue Agent, a journal that features poetry and art of the body. She has written two chapbooks--Borrowed Bodies (Pudding House, 2009) and Chance Operations (Paper Nautilus, 2016). Her debut full-length collection, Suites for the Modern Dancer, was released in 2016 from Sundress Publications.