So many things are happening 
without my lifting a finger. 

Atoms flow through the open 
border of the body. Seven billion 

hearts, electrified, contract, 
spill iron for strange organs 

to make of blood music— 
the intestines’ peristaltic dirge, 

the stomach's ecstatic rave, 
the percussion of lids and lashes 

beating conductorless. Even if I
tell my back to straighten, how little 
I think of the many making 
it happen—thousands of neurons 

bundled on the night shift, directing couriers 
of salt and bananas to freely exchange at 

the cell and through the cellular 
wall. I’m a porous thing waking daily 

to apply proteins to its face,
to maintain my fickle boundary. 

How could nothing go wrong? 
All I'm doing is the least I can do.

Published May 16th, 2021

Rushi Vyas is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection When I Reach For Your Pulse (Four Way Books, 2023) and the collaborative chapbook Between Us, Not Half a Saint (Gasher, 2021) with Rajiv Mohabir. Rushi is a two-time finalist for the National Poetry Series and his chapbook of poems Physics from the Scaffold was named Runner-Up for the 2020 Center for Book Arts Chapbook Contest. Born in Ohio, Rushi now lives in Aotearoa New Zealand where he is working toward his PhD in Literature at Te Whare Wānanga o Ōtākou / University of Otago. Some of his poems are forthcoming or published in The Georgia Review, Indiana Review, A Clear Dawn: New Asian Voices from Aotearoa (AUP, 2021), Tin House, Adroit, Redivider, Landfall (NZ), Waxwing, The Offing, and elsewhere.

Nicole Storm is a California-based artist. Storm has been part of Creative Growth Art Center for over 26 years. Based in Oakland, Creative Growth is a non-profit arts organization for artists with disabilities with both a professional studio and gallery. Storm has exhibited her work at the Outsider Art Fair in New York and the D’Dessin Art Fair in Paris. Her recent exhibition at Creative Growth Gallery, The Rainbow Two, can be viewed online, along with more of Storm’s work.