Papier-mâché over rolled and crushed chicken wire

Isabel Neal  

Proliferating voice : prism. This I transits into sense :

world-function, the way writing’s a universe process

enacting itself, so the question whether or not to slips

as tide. Incline toward vastness : one child palms a flat stone

at sea-edge : that stone’s disappearance from us, its

skipped tail our gaze. If tensing, if shamefaced, loosely, sick,

at least I answer with description of any light. In meditation

beside Hannah, buoyant orange element – foam

if my legs were sea – beams from my knee. Always

something water like a door : eyelids’ obvious, tender

inversion : a little skin between everything. Shining solar

plexus beetle. Its fabulously delicate legs. As a particular meadow,

June air meshes the shape I felt in the mind of my hands

and then made. It was odder, lopsided : I hoisted it and felt the air inside it.

about the author
Isabel Neal

Isabel Neal

Isabel Neal (b. 1989) is the author of Thrown Voice, which won the 2025 Yale Younger Poets Prize.

Other works by Isabel Neal


Breath paradise