Cover Art: Anish Kapoor, "A Flower, A Drama Like Death," 1986. Polystyrene, plaster, cloth, gesso, and raw pigment, three parts. MOMA

CORPUS/CORPS
we were graceless ballerinas, all
the graduate students growing thinner
hungrier, better
every year—even if our tights were not sheer
but black, as thick as chapters.

graceless—yet
there is a certain common grace
in working to the bone—a protestant grace
irresistible—good calvinists all
(especially the atheists)
we searched for signs
of our unconditional election.
in the basement bathroom with its backstage lights
i traced my clavicle, considered sticking
my inkstained finger down my throat.
​
at the bar(re) again, we drank
and wished each other merde.
(we never could resist the french.)
except
when anyone was on thin ice
we slipped
wishing devoutly
that she would break a leg.
Sarah Joyce Bersonsage received a B.A. from the University of Michigan-Flint and a Ph.D from the University of Rochester, where she specialized in seventeenth-century British literature.  She is a native of the Flint area, to which she recently returned after numerous adventures in western New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.  Her poetry has appeared in Antiphon, About Place, and Bop Dead City.
past, Molly Day                                                                                                                                                                                                              FIRE POETRY ISSUE 3 INDEX