VOMIT SONNET

In this meat sack shaped like human,
consciousness contained by cords of flesh
fallen off the bone, vibrating onto my plate—
Let the mind nest and lay its eggs.
Aqueous sacs in long undulating strings,
jelly in sea foam, albumen in saltwater,
skin bags hold organ bags.
Hold it together Jess.
Wipe your vomit from the square
of this nice man’s tile wall.
Take care of this part, where your tube begins
to pass everything through your coiled instinct
as water pumps through a sea squirt,
moving itself through the substance of its world.

Jess Yuan is a poet, architect, and educator. Her first full length collection, Slow Render, was recently published as winner of the Airlie Prize. She is the author of the chapbook Threshold Amnesia (2020), winner of the Yemassee Chapbook Contest, and has received fellowships from Kundiman and Miami Writers Institute. Her poems appear in Best New Poets, Tupelo Quarterly Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, jubilat, Pleiades, and elsewhere.