Why, Part 2

1 Minute Read Time

This photograph shows a woman looking out into the ocean on a cloudy day. — Photo by Cosiela Borta on Unsplash

When anxiety becomes circumference, 
you are a hangnail in need of soaking. 
Waking is hard; too much waiting, 
wasting wings waving
iridescent clouds 
reflecting opalescent 
in midnight pools— 
to stir or not to stir
the measure of a half-moon,
a profile of speech, light + sense 
marauding to the tune of chance: 
dot dot dot
but instead of being a woodpecker 
I’ll rubber band
the wind rush
to hold like a bouquet.

Shira Dentz

is the author of five books including SISYPHUSINA (PANK Books), winner of the Eugene Paul Nassar Prize 2021, and two chapbooks including FLOUNDERS (Essay Press). Her writing appears in many venues including Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Cincinnati Review, Iowa Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Pleiades, Lana Turner, Brooklyn Rail, Plume, Apartment, Nat Brut, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Idaho Review, New American Writing, Poets.org, Verse Daily, Poetry Daily, and NPR, and she’s a recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, Poetry Society of America’s Lyric Poem and Cecil Hemley Awards, Painted Bride Quarterly’s Poetry Prize, and Electronic Poetry Review’s Discovery Award.

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