all the things that come with a person leaving by Jessica Popeski

September 1, 2023
Poem title: all the things that come with a person leaving Poet name: Jessica Popeski Poem: move as if through honey: slower than you’d like, to grow stronger than you are. remember this: if your head’s a spinning top at bedtime, it’s enough just to close your eyes & rest. gauge the bird by its song: the surprise of an owl’s hoo hoo hoo at lunchtime, arrow geese overhead. pansies suckle the windowsill; an oratorio from eggshells shattered in the sink. the almond, flowering, is another way of harnessing hope; the buttercup cheers you, yellows your chin; clouds crochet away the burgeoning stars. i want to tell you all the things that come with a person leaving, the abundance of jumpers, of cotton lawn, the single piece of silver you box & sharpie keep. unfold & refold your grief, shake it out, make it small, & get on with it. keep your new shoes off the table; never sew with pins lining your lips, & when the oranges are round & ripe, eat, let juice trickle becks to your elbows, litter the garden with their peel & pith, keep the slugs away. 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.