Before You Hold Me
You are the one who sees me,
& you spit out a key for every hour
I’m kept. & you spit out our entire room,
& you fish out prayers
& psalms from your pockets
before you can hold me.
Our shadows stretch, but we lie
as if our bodies are battered by light.
Jessie Raymundo is a poet from the Philippines. In 2024, he was awarded a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship. His poems have appeared in TAB: The Journal of Poetry and Poetics, The Madrid Review, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Singapore Unbound’s SUSPECT, and elsewhere. He is a high school English teacher at Ateneo de Manila University.