Poem: That Great Diaspora

I’ll never leave New York & when I do
I too will be unbodied — what? you
imagine I might transmogrify? I’m from
nowhere which means here & so wade out
into the briny dream of elsewheres like
a released dybbyk but can’t stand
the soulessness now everyone who ever
made sense to me has died & everyone I love
grows from my body like limbs on a rootless tree

Rachel Zucker is the author of nine books, most recently, a memoir titled “MOTHERs,” and a double collection of prose and poetry, “The Pedestrians.” Her book “Museum of Accidents” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Zucker teaches poetry at New York University.