Leah Umansky

You Have to Make Up Your Mind About What You're Going to Love

​
​The stomach is the seat of emotion.
It’s about discovery.

There is so much to discover, so much to uncover. I saw a rainbow at the reservoir yester-
day and it wasn’t even raining. That, was science. Nature. That was lucky-for-me. I have
never felt so blood and bone and cellular. All my vibrance, a narrative elongating...


                                                                                 *
The day after the inauguration, after my procedure, the nurse calls and I am teaching, I
have very good news for you. Call when you can. I call after class and she says, Leah, you
did a great job, and I say good job, body, and think: thank you body thank you spirit thank
you fear and trust and will and heart and self.


                                                                                  *
There is so much beauty in the world. Part is at our base, part is primed and moving, part
is always attaching, a shadow paled. Part is always escaping, taking a breath. That’s
the marvel in being alive in this world: one part leads to another part and together, they
are impartial and parting the curtain to the unknown ahead

                                                                                  *

                                                                        a decade
                                                                                has opened up
                                                                        a story


                                                                                      shifting in light

                                                                        in spell    in lyric    in flash
                                                                        in love in echo in armor
                                                                        in time in image in memory
                                                                        a hook
                                                                        a link
                                                                                    a braid
                                                                                            unbraiding
                                                                                an assertion
                                                                                reckoning
                                                                        a belonging
                                                                        here

                                                                                 *

These days, I think I am smiling, even when I’m not.
Everything is a lesson.
Everything is okay.

---

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Leah Umansky is the author of two full length collections, The Barbarous Century, and Domestic Uncertainties among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC since 2011. Her creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as The New York Times, POETRY, The Bennington Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Rhino, and The Massachusettes Review. She can be found at www.leahumansky.com or @leah.umansky on IG. The title of this poem was inspired by The On-Being Podcast with Krista Tippett episode with Nikki Giovanni.