By Jesi Bender

To break it in, to love something enough

He is formed in the shape of number 9

Ripped from the white, beating [w]h0le

A blessing, this wound seems

Coagulated grape jelly encrusted

To the disconnected lid

The cover of innumerable insides

This deep red, myriad

Bubbled dissonant paradise

Burns like an omnipresent hell

When you amputate part

Still feel where it should be

The happy violence of love

When she saw him saw

To cleave can both stick and split

Our bodies are the same

Evil and Good coalescing

To make it whole again.

An artist from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Jesi Bender graduated with a B.A. in English and Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2007. Her first book, entitled Oppressed by the Notion of Beauty, will be released by December 2009.

Contact: Jesi Bender * Email: jesibender@gmail.com.