I dreamt they took my shoulder, the left one
but my arm was still attached, the join
a thing I was unable
I only knew of it, so mind drew a picture
of me in the place
reorganized
Yet I saw it and I’m seeing it now as I tell you
I’d rather not discuss it but
relevant, potentially
Like that time the day pulled its costume on
so it could tell you this
in sequins
And while it changed it turned away from the mirror
it even covered itself when passing before the mirror
as if its reflection might have some power
might step out as the thing itself,
the night
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Excerpted from The Channel: Poems. Copyright (c) 2026 by Jana Prikryl. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Jana Prikryl
Jana Prikryl is the author of The After Party, which was one of The New York Times’ Best Poetry Books of the Year. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The Paris Review, and The New York Review of Books, where she is a senior editor and the poetry editor.
