Two Poems by Josiah Nelson
February 15, 2023
Ribs
You may not remember your body until a man sits next to you on the bus and his elbow folds into the space between your rib bones, just how you fit between your two best friends at recess when your hair was still thin and blonde, torn wild in the wind with no worry their tagging hands might be the only ones all day to reach out and feel your body breathing in their fingers.
Current
On the wooden bridge
the air has to shoot past
my body to get where it’s going,
but the geese already know
to tilt into that gust and glide.
Beneath, river of salmon surge
against this rush to breathe
a lifetime of water between
them and their ending.
I am stuck in the middle
of all this touch, still
learning when to flee
from a push, and when
to seek its embrace.
About Josiah Nelson
Josiah Nelson is an MFA in Writing student at the University of Saskatchewan. His work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Vast Chasm Magazine, Blank Spaces, Spring Magazine, Fractured Lit, and The Rumpus. He lives in Saskatoon.