falling by Jessica Popeski

October 24, 2023
Poem title: falling Poet name: Jessica Popeski Poem: & then, another dream of falling, forever falling, past incisor stars, down the throat of the abyss. dream of your bicycle chain, rusted red, & fingernails, falling, clean off. of your sewing machine catching, snaffling, coughing thread. of your sister remarrying, & you’ve lost your speech, your gown, eyelids mascara-spattered. of sea creatures, razor-toothed, gills bloating, urchins beckoning; you’ve snagged your calf on coral, blood ballooning, forgotten how to front crawl. dream of your grandmother as your grandmother, as a kitten, silken, slinking figure eights around your ankles, as a baby, frilled, dusk-cheeked, disks of veg bubbling on the stove, impossible desserts crowding the table, glittered jellies, steamed puddings, immaculate madeleines you gorge End of poem. Credits and bio: Copyright © Jessica Popeski Previously published in Riddle Fence, No. 37, Summer 2020. Jessica Popeski is a dis/abled opera singer, professor, and internationally published, intersectional ecofeminist poet. Her work has been published in carte blanche, Leaf Press, Room, The Nervous Breakdown, The Windsor Review, Hart House Review, Write Where We Are Now, Riddle Fence, The Woven Tale Press, White Wall Review, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of multiple scholarships and awards, and was named one of Tkaronto/Toronto’s “exceptional up and coming writers” by Open Book. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph, and authored “Oratorio” and “The Wrong Place” with Anstruther Press. Her full-length collection, “the problem with having a body,” is forthcoming with Frog Hollow Press. She was raised, for the most part, in Moscow, Russia, and Sheffield, England, by her mother and grandmother, and is a Professor of English, Creative Writing, and Music at Seneca College, George Brown College, and Humber College.