Where I am finding you in these times

In the tiny bronze star embossed onto a teaspoon.
In the panning that flickers quick between earbuds.

In the moment of cold meeting hot breath.
In the musk of the skin, post-hunt, I mean, in the ripening.

I mean, when knees bend, when brow bone calls for dirt,
I mean, in the urge to get lower still—I mean, in the urge for fusion,

and by that I mean like a deck of cards at the intersect of a shuffle,
and after, in the way the tongue curls, and laps

out round syllables like marbles, like spheres of honey.
I mean in a body, soft.

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Jessica Arcus is a poet who is compelled to give voice to the quiet and overlooked things—watching for divine presence in the day-to-dayness of life. She has been published in journals such as Landfall, takahē, Mayhem, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, and Turbine | Kapohau, and she has recently released her poetry chapbook Counterweight.