Category Archives: Poetry

by Jessie Carty

 –after the documentary “Nostalgia for the Light”

The woman palms objects small and white, explains
the coral-like ones are from inside bones:
porous spaces for the processing
of calcium. The flatter, sharper
segments are shards
from longer bones.
She’s learned

a new vocabulary
while searching for what
remains of her family: dead
from a dictator’s decision, skeletons
purposefully scattered to prevent reunion.
The desert’s open spaces and lack of humidity
tend toward the large scale: work camps, telescopes, Continue reading →

by Jessie Carty

– after a line from the movie adaptation of “Cloud Atlas”

Nobody says anything.

To tell her would be an admission
of how we gave careful
consideration to the spaces
on her body not occupied
by clothing; to her tanned
and then alternatively lined skin;
to the ratchet of her spine. Continue reading →