Editor's note: This poem has received a nomination for the 2023 Pushcart Prize: Rented Body by Janavi Held I live uneasily in my rented body wondering when the surrogate season of shadows will pass. Perishable memories I have clutched within this rented vessel; so many forsaken treasures slip like blinded angels through the atoms of my rented jail. They do not land on rock; they come from my bones like a hurricane, as my rented flesh is uplifted by hunger and money as the two parts of my soul search for eyes, for the waterfall, for the forget-me-nots to thaw the frozen atmosphere of tears, for the pale cathedral of doubt to replace its dead shadow with a constant heart. In my rented body I climb titanic, twisting stairs, casting my own shadow on the torn remnants of these days, and mortal fibers, I’ve torn them from my rented heart, those...
Women's Spiritual Poetry