Serfdom is a Shadow’s Versatitility
Language’s texture wakes me—moss
undulates the cave wall, makes me consider
myself a time honored hobby
Father dips into retirement
to secure my material existence against my disposition
to make found art of each episode—tchotchkes
of thought, less moss than shadow
In one-offs, change’s constancy lauds inertia
Mother vanishes into one man
after another, solvent as sunrise across water
The circumstances of my birth were dubious as those of any
toothed creature—more need than internal resource, my riches
flit in lamplight, termite wings glitter, I’m little
more than a swarm of needs,
pluraling so often as to blur
I glimpse one mother and another takes her
place—range as honest a quality
as stability, and still
to see her take on the shape of her containers—
so like water—
makes me ashamed to be so like her
Once, for $25 an hour, I stood naked in the center
of a circle of learning artists, still until my flank went
slack with shivers, twitches disrupting
lines—“the body rests in motion,”
the teacher told me, while his ponytail cast
a kelp-forest shadow onto his back
Jessica Morey-Collins earned her MFA at the University of New Orleans, where she won an Academy of American Poets award and worked as associate poetry editor for Bayou Magazine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Juked, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a Masters of Community and Regional Planning at the University of Oregon, focusing on hazard mitigation and economic resilience. She tweets @cautiousmonster.