By Jen Schalliol Huang

Within is my body, and without

also contours my shape

like a sail: sometimes filled,

sometimes buffeted. Sometimes

we don’t get choices, only input:

temperature, pressure, nuance.

Deviation. Sudden and immoderate.

The body can be a leaf in wind

curled and scudding,

paper-thin toward the edges,

or petaled with decadence,

peony-crowned.

When the bloom is

too heavy for the stem,

it becomes the curving bow,

the head pillowed in dirt.

It becomes music. Song

in the most surprising places.

Jen Schalliol Huang is a disabled poet living pondside in Massachusetts. She reads for [PANK] and has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best New Poets, and Best of the Net. Her work has been published or is upcoming in Jet Fuel, the lickety-split, Sou’wester, Shenandoah, SWWIM, and others.