New poems of strength and vulnerability from Sarah Neal McCurry, from “Twenty Questions” to “The way a starving body will eat its own” to “What on earth: the shortest autobiography.”

Negotiation on being

 

On your star sheets you squeeze
every muscle together, zip self
up from the ankles. Ceiling’s most perfect
light-tit glows, you are water
and air-proof until you sneeze.

Undissolving is against it―
a travel-in-reverse through
the up-current of a stare
bending a spoon. Undertow
your self, then speak
so it anchors you.