Even if the Body

is ours, hourly out of our reach. It belongs to us, is just a vein of time.  

*

If the only body we have is a spire circling, even if the circling goes on and on and on, even if the only knowing is that the body is ours, was ours, even though it lies outside of our reach. 

*

My acupuncturist says to put my hands on my body each day and just feel it, focus on it. Maybe that’s the love I need — to listen and adore. It’s the self regarding the body by way of touch. Our bodies are doing so much right now to keep us  — to keep us.

*

Willa Cather said her life started when she stopped admiring everything else. I can feel that blossoming, too. I have let go of the sidelines. 

*

Being a poet is a way of having two lives. It feels like there are two, the before and the after, both pressing their faces against the glass, both trying to outlive the other. The butchering and the falsehood are two of the same. So much of what is useless has purpose.

ξ

Leah Umansky is the author of three books of poems, most recently OF TYRANT, forthcoming from The Word Works in 2024. 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, and Rhino. She can be found at www.leahumansky.com or @leah.umansky on IG.