I don’t want to be held back any longer--
I want to float
in the atmosphere with the darlings
I slaughtered, ringed with marigolds /
my dark hair / ringing with blackbirds,
with stars
in my throat.
It is comforting to think
there is something out there,
surrounding us, waiting for us,
filling our lungs,
the sac that holds us,
the sac of water we will return to—without truth,
but faith
as solid as a calcium rich
shell filled with
a delicate stuffing:
red and green peppers, onions,
and bread crumbs / shaped
by my mother’s slim hands
& slender memories / pumping two legs on a
swing set, the wind rushing through the elms.

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Jocelyn Ulevicus is an American artist and writer whose work interrogates the transience of being and the hospitality of presence. Her work is either forthcoming or published in magazines such as SWWIM Every Day, The Free State Review, Blue Mesa Review, and Humana Obscura, amongst others. In addition, Ulevicus is a Best Poets 2022 nominee, a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, and her in-progress memoir, The Birth of a Tree, was shortlisted for the 2019 Santa Fe Literary Award Program. She is currently in Amsterdam, completing research for her first collection of poems.