“Maybe I did treat everything in the world as though it was a medicine.”
— Henderson the Rain King, Saul Bellow

What entered me
        as prayer:     soft globes
                    of chokecherry bunched
            in the buds of late aster     the dark-
                    eyed junco     a mess of
                                          eggshell & nest
The skin is the largest
                organ in the body
    meaning     what is outside
                                is inside too     meaning
              there are always two ways
                          to poison a person     from
Skin to shivering
                bone     love
                          is the color of cough
                syrup soaked in straw
                                          & sun:
Between the shadows
          I fold gold into a body
                                hungry for prescription.

Jingyu Li immigrated to the United States from Beijing at age three, and grew up in Wyoming with her younger brother. She went to university in Boston and is interested in myth in her poetry. Her work has appeared in Humble Pie Mag, and her self-published zine, Lunar New Year, explores Chinese language and diaspora and can be found at Bluestockings Cooperative, Dog Eared Books, and Silver Sprocket.