Lucky Rabbit’s Foot – The Journal

I want to understand the arithmetic of rabbits.
I’ve cradled the childhood shoe
of a girl I once loved, the leathery tongue

weathered through seasons. I’ve learned heartbreak,
without discipline, becomes as untallied
as rabbits in heat swarming in nightgrass.

The terror of numbers. I’ve grazed the globe
of a bunny’s stomach: the eventual citadel
of maggots. The thick dark ringing

and electricity of her nervous life.
The angora coat once left on the corner
of my bed. The older man I once knew

caressed my feet. Flecked with red polish;
I once was a dancer. He said the curve
of where I fractured my ankle was the softest

part of my body. A rabbit’s foot
hung on his keychain. Before putting on
his clothes, he held a finger to my lip and called

me: sweet bunny. Inside, I devour
fences and fields. An animal so tender yet ravaging.
As opaque as the final gaze of a dying dog

Jai Hamid Bashir is a Pakistani-American artist with work published in American Poetry Review, POETRY, Arkansas International, Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, and Guernica. She has earned numerous accolades, including an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Zócalo Public Square Poetry Prize, and The Linda Corrente Memorial Prize at Columbia University. Her work has also received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and has been featured in The Best of the Net anthology. Jai is a graduate of The University of Utah and Columbia University and resides in Salt Lake City, Utah.