Every time she turns her headbetween your ilium & coxal bones,you feel your waterabout to break, afraidof that balloon-popin your pelvis, afraidbreak is wholly wrongfor what shifts or tears, slips& loosens. Bones break.Hearts, maybe. But the veilbetween your body’s end& her beginning? There’sno breaking it. Looks like that babyis about to fall right out of you,the women call, holdingtight to what’s already fallenfrom inside of them. Fall too,wholly wrong for the waya body enters breathing.Rain falls. Fruits from trees.But body from body?There must be moreto describe such cleaving.Directionless & unfinished.I’m gonna report youto the grocery store, a manyells passing, you stoleone of their watermelons.How easy to beso wrong in namingwhat you’ve never carried.She is not a vine-trailingscrambler yet, spreadingas she clings to soil. For now,she’s still reaching for the sunatop a tall palm, stillhardening, bones in her skulljust starting to overlap, preparingfor descent, She’s onlya pineapple, you correct him,& keep on walking, oneslow bone in frontof the other, unsurewhich one of youis going where or howto name your joined,persistent motion.
Week 33: Pineapple
Feature Date
- January 31, 2023
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Copyright © 2022 by Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach (www.juliakolchinskydasbach.com) emigrated from Dnipro, Ukraine as a Jewish refugee when she was six years old. She is the author of three poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother; Don’t Touch the Bones; and 40 WEEKS, forthcoming in April 2023 from YesYes Books. Her poems have recently appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and American Poetry Review. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of the model poem for “Dear Ukraine”: A Global Community Poem https://dearukrainepoem.com/. Julia is Assistant Professor and Murphy Fellow in Poetry at Hendrix College and lives in Little Rock, Arkansas with her family.
Fall 2022
Chicago, Illinois
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The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought originated late one night. We were interested in the conversations that could arise when an account was paired with creative work. We imagined a journal where writers could offer such accounts beside their poems and prose, and where artists could offer the same pairing of work and aesthetic statement.
account = history, sketch, marker, repository of influences
An account of a specific work traces its arc—through texts and world—while giving voice to the artist’s approach. The literary/art market’s tidal wave can tend to engulf the maker’s account of the work. We believe that an account can restore the relationship between artist and aesthetic.
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