“This is an elegy
for what can’t be undone—
a sky that sags heavy,
hand over our mouths
that forces us to breathe
with eyes
fingertips
every part we have left.”
Enjoy this audio recording of “Leavings” by Nisha Atalie from Vol. 33:3 of CALYX Journal! Buy your copy here!
Nisha Atalie is a poet of South Asian and European descent from the Pacific Northwest. She is a poetry editor at MASKS, and her poems have been published in Poem-A-Day, Blood Orange Review, Tinderbox Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2021 Eileen Lannan Poetry Prize. She lives in Chicago, IL, on occupied Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi land.