A Poem by Jessica Morey-Collins

Jessica Morey-Collins

Jessica Morey-Collins

Jessica Morey-Collins is an MFA student at the University of New Orleans, where she works as associate poetry editor for Bayou Magazine. She received a scholarship to study at the NYS Summer Writer's Institute and was a finalist for the 4th Annual Gigantic Sequins Poetry Contest. Her poems and nonfiction can be found or are forthcoming in Pleiades, scissors & spackle, Vinyl Poetry, The Boiler Journal, Animal Literary Journal and elsewhere. She blogs on craft for the North American Review.

High-Risk Behaviors

The reality is at once boneless and holy: I may never again be a reason
to use the word home. A third party vendor inspects my luggage

and leaves a note: You were loved, once. Idea men take
seats near the exits. You is an idea that heats up

like a coal. Morning comes, goes. I am not
myself. I cool, cold. I wander into a lolling door 

and am swallowed whole by the word 
hazel (reeds given over to long, hot  

autumns: a well-managed laugh). Construction huddles
in pockets of the neighborhood. Somebody snores until noon.

Echoes bounce around Taipei’s alleyways, buried
by the sound of rain by the time they find my bedroom.

I watch a twenty six minute compilation of every stare
from the Twilight Saga. I stretch. I wait to hear from anyone.