Extract from This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, 2005, poems by Juliana Spahr:

S. 3

There are these things:

cells, the movement of cells and the division of cells

and then the general beating of circulation

and hands, and body, and feet

and skin that surrounds hands, body, feet.

This is a shape,

a shape of blood beating and cells dividing

S. 4

But outside of this shape is space.

There is space between the hands.

There is space between the hands and space around the hands.

There is space around the hands and space in the room.

There is space in the room that surrounds the shapes of everyone’s

hands and body and feet and cells and the beating contained

within.

There is space, an uneven space, made by this pattern of bodies.

This space goes in and out of everyone’s bodies.

Everyone with lungs breathes the space in and out as everyone

with lungs breathes the space between the hands in and out

S. 9

How connected we are with everyone.

S. 10

How lovely and how doomed this connection of everyone with

lungs.