Size / / /

I stand in a cell for suffrage.
I sit, I succumb to sleep.

I am sensible of grasses,
the structure of grasses,
how grasses affect bison,
and therefore, us.

My stomach clamps down
to the size of an egg.
I’m beyond hunger now.

I think about grasses,
study grasses from this cell,
stuffed with suffering for suffrage,
my sisters sighing like grasses.

I imagine someday sorting grasses
in the fields, thinking of this cell
only sometimes, only sporadically,
shakily. The grasses stop me
from becoming despondent.
They save me from despair.



Jessy Randall’s poems and stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, Nature, and Scientific American. Her most recent book is Mathematics for Ladies: Poems on Women in Science (MIT, 2022). She is a librarian at Colorado College, and her website is http://bit.ly/JessyRandall.
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