The Islands Visible Only on Clear Days, BY KASEY JUEDS |
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But not in the weeks of falling, of unswerving streets scumbled by rain. Of plums stunned from trees, damp and tender on sidewalks, those islands fog-shuttered just off the bridge. And the people who jumped from it, who keep jumping, despite barriers, the signs reading please. When that animal quickened herself from roadside mist, you knew bobcat sure as any brightness vanishing, taillights like rubies swallowed by the next hill’s crest. Most who jump choose the bay side, not the one that faces the sea. Even then wanting a glimpse of windows, or that other distant bridge — human things to tether to. Some who lived say they changed their minds partway down. Which must mean that some who died did too. Fishing, pelicans hurl their softness against the water’s adamant edge; rain rewrites the grasses into green. In one self-portrait, Frida Kahlo painted herself twice. Inside the museum, closed now for the night, she keeps on holding her own hand. |
Kasey Jueds is the author of two collections of poetry, both from the University of Pittsburgh Press: Keeper, which won the 2012 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and The Thicket, forthcoming in 2021. Her work can be found in journals including American Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, and Pleiades. She lives in the mountains of New York State with one human, a spotted dog, and many houseplants.