Slant of the Girl
by Jessica Van de Kemp
I cut my feet that autumn
on all the bay-rocks.
The hill without end.
My tent was a net in the air.
I ran down the hill so my legs would give out.
Poison ivy everywhere.
The others reddened and boiled
into spider nests, any rough cloud
that could hang them
above the green.
I lived happily on the outcrop,
walking on mountaintops,
scarring my soles.
For once, I was blood and bone,
my feet like rhythm-bowls.
I thought I had what you had,
a strange mind. I thought I was
born to grow upward.
That autumn, the hill ran
down into darkness, and I slanted
with the trees toward the bottom.
I walked on ground forgotten
by humans. That’s how I learned
of the moon’s jaw, opening for virgins,
as if a temple could be made
from moss and foliage.
My mind is stranger every day,
it works by rock and moon-cut.
I sleep in tents of air.
The others have gone
to find help for their bodies.
They’ll find none.
I learned how to die as I lived,
like a photon, and weigh
the salt of my years
against the exoskeletons.
Jessica Van de Kemp (BA, B.Ed, MA) is a 2014 Best of the Net nominee and the author of the poetry chapbook, Spirit Light (The Steel Chisel, 2015). The recipient of a BlackBerry Scholarship in English Language and Literature and the winner of a TA Award for Excellence in Teaching, Jessica is currently pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric at the University of Waterloo.
Twitter: @jess_vdk.