Any Thriving Root | Barbara Schwartz

Barbara Schwartz’s poems have appeared in Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry, Quiddity, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Atticus Review, The 2River View, Josephine Quarterly, Nerve Lantern, and elsewhere. In 2006, she received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Currently, she is a poetry reader for Ep;phany Magazine, and serves as the director of education for Boys & Girls Harbor in New York City.     This Body’s for the BirdsNumbness, blood’s blooming plumage, knows nothing of the skinit inhabits, boasts only of its singular tyranny.Pleasure, too, is as dumbas a couple's molting wingsunhinged at the firstbruise of morning – So, what of knowledge if the body relies uponso many drunken couriers soaringhalf-scrawled messages throughsacred corridors? To be eviscerated thoughtlessly with so many thoughts fluttering across the onyx electric airways of the mind (o little terror trapped inside –) is itself anotherrelentless thought caughtin the diaspora of being wholly temporal,