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Respiration by Jamaal May | Poetry Magazine

poetryfoundation.org · 139 words · saved by 1 readers

Whenever a guest drops by unexpectedly, my eye goes to the pile of mail on the counter, the tumbleweeds of dog hair roaming freely across the kitchen floor from our... Jamaal May was born and raised in Detroit. His first book, Hum (2013), won a Beatrice Hawley Award and an American Library Association Notable Book Award and was an NAACP Image Award nominee. Hum explores machines, technology, obsolescence, and community; in an interview, May stated...

Share A lot of it lives in the trachea, you know. But not so much that you won’t need more muscle: the diaphragm, a fist clenching at the bottom. Inhale. So many of us are breathless, you know, like me kneeling to collect the pottery shards of a house plant my elbow has nudged into oblivion. What if I sigh, and the black earth beneath me scatters like insects running from my breath? Am I a god then? Am I insane because I worry about the disassembling of earth regularly? I walk more softly now into gardens or up the steps of old houses with impatiens stuffed in their window boxes. When it’s you

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