I tell her, my jaw came apart, but first there was the cracking
like strikes and strikes of lightning but there was no light
She asks if I saw blood No, I answer, having to recall
the naked gum line where my teeth like even rows,
flowerless pots cracked and cracked again
She says, it means someone is going to die someone not close to you
blood would signify closeness, she adds and I wonder
how to calculate proximity, the pace of death its touch based on a lack
a reach we cannot hold based on this dream
based on my mother how death can come on fast
a lightening strike, so bright and far away you have to wait to hear it
crack the air wait for it to pin the soul
wait for ground or its jawline for someone’s
toothless grin to shine and fall out of the bloodless sky
Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach emigrated as a Jewish refugee from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine in 1993. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon and is in the University of Pennsylvania’s Comparative Literature Ph.D. program. Julia’s poetry has appeared in Guernica, Nashville Review, and Consequence Magazine, among others journals. Julia’s manuscript The Bear Who Ate the Stars has been selected as the winner of Split Lip Magazine’s Uppercut Chapbook Award, and is forthcoming from Split Lip Press later this year.