The Art of Instinct by Elizabeth Jacobson

Although everything always has everything to do with sex,

 

each time, this one thing

 

has more to do with the sway of tree shadows

 

contained in rectangle boxes of light -- 

 

reflections of the windows, yielding from the windows,

 

caught in a breeze on the white plaster walls of the room,

 

and although it is often true the male of a species

 

has the more colorful markings, here I am the brightest one

 

against the white sheets

 

back arching,

 

a rising whale throwing its form from the sea

 

turning rose, then scarlet, then peony -- light spreading across our

     flesh

 

and the marvelous ability to be held by instinct.
 

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Elizabeth Jacobson is the author of a chapbook, A Brown Stone (Dancing Girl Press), and a full-length collection, Her Knees Pulled In (Tres Chicas Books). Another chapbook, Are the Children Make Believe?, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Recent poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Orion Magazine, Ploughshares, and Plume. A graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program, Jacobson is the founding director of WingSpan Poetry Project.