NOT LOST BY JOYCE CHONG

I just mean the tallest fences.
I’d felt myself splintering
through the cracks in the wood,
coming out brick-dusted and opaque
and still I couldn't recognize the thing
on the other side. Not those limbs,
or my limbs, or the flesh of the trees.
 
I'd forgotten neck from
spinal cord, misplaced trachea
for the hollow bones of a bird.
I'd tried to make voice from metal, bit down
hard the cool sting of copper; my tongue nothing
but trace fragment.
 
I was split thin to collarbone, but this whistling
storm outside, how it wanted to be in my throat,
in my breath. How I caught lungs until I forgot myself,
saw the blade stuck in cheek, not the blood
on the floor, just the glint from the lights
overhead. How they rung in the quiet,
but I'd gorged on all my voices and now
the silence was a lakebed & / I'd found
myself / shipwrecked at the bottom.

✱✱✱

Joyce Chong is a poet and writer living in Ontario, Canada. Her work can be found in One Throne Magazine, Hypertrophic Literary, Liminality, and Noble Gas Qtrly, among others. She is a contributing editor for Wildness Magazine’s weekly column, the Wilds. Her micro-chapbooks “Inventory” and “Dream-like Houses” are available from Ghost City Press. You can find her at joycechong.weebly.com or you can follow her on twitter @_joycechong