Bodies that jostle, press, heave.
The physicality of these streets.
And money that leaks, warmth
in the city’s erogenous zones.
Those who get ahead
adopt the metal crane’s posture,
grow in the direction of the skyline.
We keep the turbulence inward
unlike in days past.
Who knows what will reawaken
it from its slumber?
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Excerpt from “Reaching Saturation” from The Rupture Tense. Copyright © 2022 by Jenny Xie. Used with permission from the poet.
Jenny Xie
Jenny Xie is the author of Nowhere to Arrive, recipient of the Drinking Gourd Chapbook Prize, and her poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, the New Republic, Poetry, Tin House, and elsewhere. She lives in New York and teaches at New York University. Eye Level is her most recent collection.