Poetry in Motion
New York
Origin Story
Jenny Xie
Origin Story
I was profligate like a floodlight to the sun.
Hoarded saccharine and toothmarks,
wanted only the thickest rhymes, two of each.
Full I was of promises I never intended to keep:
puckered laughter, lines to feast.
I let everyone who entered my life enter through me.
Demanded nonsense love and bodies that would ring.
Not to mention higher kilowatts
of creeping joy, more red in everything—
"Origin Story” from Eye Level. Copyright © 2018 by the author. Reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Graywolf Press graywolfpress.org.