Amaranth Borsuk is the author of Handiwork (Slope Editions, 2012), selected by Paul Hoover for the 2011 Slope Editions Book Prize, and, with programmer Brad Bouse, of Between Page and Screen (Siglio Press, 2012), an augmented reality book of poems. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in CutBank, SPECS, Harp & Altar, The Offending Adam, and The Destroyer. Abra, a book of conjoined poems written with Kate Durbin and illustrated by Zach Kleyn, is forthcoming from ZG Press.She has a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities at MIT, where she works and teaches at the intersection of print and digital media. A New Vessel Amaranth Borsuk A special commission looked into                         my lungs, crystal chandelier of swifts, a city, like Lwow, built                         around a leaven, ornate organ, pronounced me sound for study,                         body ready as the school’s for cultivation: conservatory:                         greenhouse with breath music starting. Both were occupied, but my lungs only                         pretended to the commons, encompassed a lovely absence, a space                         of thinking over space. Professor S., famous baritone, deepened one.                         Widely-admired, whiskered, one of us, he threatened to leave when they forbade                         my return (Father’s business known) and sang an acrid aria at the assembly.                         The fourteen chambers of my glass house opened and the bears let me walk around                         in my own body, testing its resonance. He saw in me someone where I saw only                         wind. He would teach me to control it.