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Private Property

Exhaustion slides from the body through the lips first. The invisible are flush with it, they drowse on blue subway seats. Heads bowed, yes, but to what. This island of concrete and glass tied by rough hands. The smell of this body among other bodies. Negatives of another’s pleasure. All of us living on loan—yet only some grasp the arrangement. Those shuttled back and forth, drifting to other far places. Underground, the window is also a mirror. It reflects sleep chasing bodies back into the borderless empire of the interior.
 
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Jenny Xie

Jenny Xie

Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf, 2018), winner of 2017 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, and Nowhere to Arrive (Northwestern University Press, 2017) ...

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