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Jessica Jacobs
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Forget ecstasy, that easy leap outside the body. Our bodies are already up on blocks, listing and unsightly in the yard. No. The way to God is not around the world but through it. So dig your heels into your heels; flex your fists, your jaw. Then release to become for an instant all ear: listen out, listen up to branch sawing branch like a giant violin; listen in—there’s your blood’s steady loop-the-loop. Cue eyes: a seizure of light through the leaves. And tongue: slick of iron from a nicked gum and, once again, you’re five, last little tooth on its last little strand, wagging with your breath like a swing. Now, nose: breathe in the dirt, astir as it is with beetles and rot and light- seeking shoots. And, finally, be all skin: like a kid’s face pressed to an aquarium window, presence up so hard to the edge of your husk you’re joined with the wind rivering the cool air to silk. Only then should you give yourself to joy, dive from the twin heights of your eyes. And that tiny pool below, the one you’re hurtling toward? It’s not God-- well, not exactly. It’s you. One breath deeper than you’ve ever been, one breath closer to the heeded, heedful world. |
JESSICA JACOBS is the author of unalone, poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis (Four Way Books, 2024); Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books, 2019), one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year and winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards; and Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), winner of the New Mexico Book Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award; and is the co-author of Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/Penguin RandomHouse, 2020). Jessica is the founder and executive director of Yetzirah: A Hearth for Jewish Poetry.
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