Vasoconstriction
Tighten your beltway. Each notch a sphere without escape–
over a bridge and dropped back into the concentric circles.
If you create enough forward motion to escape the centrifuge,
you can skip all those pink-petaled cherry trees, head straight
for the ocean. If not, you get sucked into yet another white city
where every monument is a memory and a lesson in history;
but it’s all someone else’s, someone’s ghostdreams of empires,
someone’s long-drowned ship. The radials make you think all
roads lead to the center. You forget they stretch out and away.
by Jenny Morse
Jenny Morse completed her PhD at the University of Illinois—Chicago and currently teaches at Colorado State University. Her poetry has been published in Notre Dame Review, Wilderness House, Quiddity, Yemassee, and Terrain. Her critical work has appeared in Seismopolite, The Montreal Review, The Ofi Press, and the Journal of Contemporary Thought.
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