City Song Gathering

In the bones of this city there are restless children
and women with chapped and fluttering hands.
There is a newspaper laying solitary on a park bench, leaves
of print twisting and snapping in the wind.

In the bones of this city there is a hunger as people search,
eagerly, desperately, rifling through each other's skin,
peeling back the eyelids, tapping on the floorboards
waiting for the hollow sound.

In the bones there is a loneliness
and a song. Young girls with sturdy wrists and
soft mouths, young girls, faces glazed over
with hope. Cheekbones, eyelids, lips
painted on china-fine.

^

Biography

Jessie Gerson-Nieder is 20 and a student at McGill University in Montreal currently spending the year studying at Trinity College, Dublin. She is majoring in English and Political Science. Her e-mail address is hayseedjgn@hotmail.com.