Loisa Fenichell

The usurpation of belonging

Departure like a golden film. This scattered world is full of punctuated
weather. Early A.M. light, I love most
to witness the orange images spinning dizzily across living room
walls. I need to notice new playthings. The strange brightness
of the local flowers pressing to my throat. I have travelled toyless
to exposed villages, along slated rivers. Have kneeled,
dipped my hands to the waters, placed luminous fish between
my fingers like cavitied teeth. Have given the fish names—
underbelly, merry-go-round, sorrow, first snowfall—so that I
might keep them alive forever. There are moments
in this world made of nothing but spider webs. Words migrating
like stones on a shore. The people to whom these words belong, who also
might leave. Underneath my loose clothes the real weeping
begins. Blood-stained brown. Even ghosts arrive at endings. The morning
I discovered my new house had an attic, its insides were only minorly full.

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Loisa Fenichell's work has been featured or is forthcoming in Guernica Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Washington Square Review, Narrative Magazine and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook, all these urban fields, was published by nothing to say press. Her collection, Wandering in all directions of this earth, is a Tupelo Press Berkshire Prize 2021 finalist. She is the recipient of an award from Bread Loaf and will be an MFA candidate at Columbia University come fall of 2021.