I have nothing to say in this windy world
I use my yellow hand
to point at the horizon: there’s nothing but a line

I gesture wildly at the heavens, where there’s nothing
but the abysmal swelling and disappearing of clouds

I stamp the ground to summon its greens
          but a rock hits my heel
          and a crow cackles

This may be:     what is to love nothing
The river on my right is clear, revealing a bed
    of rocks that also love nothing

Those ancient rocks make a clicking sound when the water moves,
              but it means nothing

I drink from the river like it’s nothing

I enter the water

What is the balm of Gilead? What is the rushing water?
                What is my head doing in it,
                refreshed
                in good order

                I am refreshed
                I recall my head before this brightness
                when it was bland like a rock

                I was a barrel full of will, yet weak like a girl
                The mouth on me cackled in the night
                and pursed when it should not

I am buoyed by this water, swaying the way it goes
I’ve got the body of a youth, no bag of bones, no boom
I wag in the river like a child, like a fish
I waste the day, I laze on the shores again

My palms are white, white, white

I eat the eggs of ducks, of quails, stolen from the rushes of the bogs
I’ve stolen my breakfast by the skin of my hand

I put an egg in a pan
I swivel it
on a white-hot element

I’m happily fortified by this heat and fat          I whoop!
And from the fringe of my hand, the glint of the plate, I wave
A herd of beasts, burdened on Earth, unload themselves onto the plain

The wind will be howling

I curl up like a child, head asleep on a rock
Behold this heap

Emily Tristan Jones was born in Yellowknife, Canada. Her poems have been in Harvard Review, Vallum, Denver Quarterly, Mandorla, and elsewhere. She is an alumna of the University of Chicago (winner of its emerging poets series), Banff Centre, and Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. In 2013, she formed Hermes, an art gallery in Halifax. Now settled in La Petite Patrie of Montreal, she teaches for the Quebec Writers’ Federation and coordinates Columba, an online poetry quarterly.

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