Climbing Vesuvius in Stilettos

by Jessica Ursell


unruffled
standing serene
wet heat shimmers
thick and heavy 
on her 70th birthday
 
sulfur scented
waves wafting 
while she gazes 
from the volcano’s base
at its pitted peak 
 
her silver stilettos 
sink slightly 
into the fertile tephra 
 
poised
motionless and regal
like the ballet dancer 
she once was
ready for flight 
 
tourists thronging
swarm past
their cleated boots
make vanishing indents
on their way up
 
impervious
leg delicately 
outstretched
 
she steps forward 
balancing seamlessly 
on those spiky points 


* * * * *

Jessica Ursell is an Air Force veteran, poet, and essayist. The granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Soviet gulags, and descended from a Taíno great-grandma, she understands in her bones the consequences of bigotry.

Her essays, "At the Country Club with Superman" and "Standing Up for the Voiceless: My Fight with Royalty in Anne Frank’s House," were published by The Jewish Writing Project in 2022. Other works published January and June 2024. "Sedimented Rock" appears in Writing In A Woman’s Voice. Jessica’s poem, "A Still-Life Collage of Lost Objects," appears in the February 2024 print issue of Down in the Dirt magazine.