Migration

Just look at the Monarch butterfly

                        who veers to the east for miles                                                    

                                                on its migratory path

as if the massive mountain that scientists believe

existed millennia before

                                     were still there.


For us, the mountain does not exist because


we cannot see it—

I am reaching for a book, no I am reaching

                        for a brush to run through my grandmother’s hair

when she was just a child, fresh from her bath—


Each time I lift a fork to my lips

                                                 who else’s hunger am I

feeding. Who else’s fervor slides

my palm along your muscled thigh

as though it were a fertile

            field that needs tending.

Sally Bliumis-Dunn teaches at the 92nd Street Y and is Associate Editor-at Large for Plume Poetry journal. Her poems have appeared the New York Times, Paris Review, PBS NewsHour, Plume, Poetry London, Prairie Schooner, RATTLE, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. In 2002, she was a finalist for the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize. Her third book, Echolocation, was published by Plume Editions/MadHat Press in March of 2018 and was shortlisted for the Eric Hoffer Award, a longlist finalist for the Julie Suk Award and Runner Up for the Poetry By the Sea Best Book Award.

Published July 15 2023