Second Poetry Portfolio
nefesh
By Jennifer Barber
translated
in the margin note
as throat or gullet, soul—
place in
the windpipe where
breathing grows visible
and the mouth
gulps air,
hatchling
with an open beak,
a swift in mid-flight,
hunger that alights
with no
warning in the grass,
in the psalmist’s
O my soul.
Jennifer Barber is the author of Given Away (forthcoming in 2012) and Rigging the Wind (2003), both from Kore Press. She teaches at Suffolk University in Boston, where she is a founding and current editor of the literary journal Salamander.
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