What Is It That Water Means? #NaPoWriMo

I knew I was walking on knifeblades,
but I didn’t know why. I was swimming;
I didn’t know I was swimming. Thirsty,
or not even aware of thirst, but still
drinking water, drinking salt, as if
my blood was running out of me, and this
was my new blood. It is all as if
sleepwalking in a dream of waking.
When she asks what water I am made of,
it is as if in a foreign language.
What water, indeed. Drinking is breathing,
or breathing is to inhale the wet salt
and burn with it, each step a hissing
sizzle of pain, fizzing of bubbles.

On Study #NaPoWriMo

In honor of Rabbi Daniel K. Alter

This is the way we begin: “Baruch atah
Adonai.” Or is the beginning when
Lives emerge, new ones, from a father and
Mother, and grandparents, and more, into
Unseen stories, remembered in fragments?
Dayenu. Dayenu. We exist in
Times of questions answered with more questions,
Unquenched curiosity, ancient roots
Expanding through now into infinite
Somedays. Oh, lifting somedays in laughter,
Dusk is another new day. Someone says
Awe is a waystation between questions,
Yes, and learning the next question to ask,
So grateful to learn from one still learning.

Planet

“What’s your home planet like?” they ask. Unsure
if this is a question, a pick-up-line,
or a hallucination seeking cure,
I pretend I don’t have ears. “Okay, fine,”
answers a growler, “I’ll go first. Beaches.
It’s all beaches.” The next says, “It’s mountains.”
Then they all start talking, from amoebas
to arachnids, naming one of thousands
as if there is only one. A cloud stares
at me. “What?” I ask, “I don’t know. I saw
only the forest. I don’t know if there’s
more. I don’t move much.” It drifts off, a claw
dangling. The next box whispers in 3D,
“I don’t think group therapy is for me.”

Once More

The people returned to mortality,
as if they were little gods blessed with health,
and endings as well, of their own choosing.
The plague expressed a great concern at this.
The plague began to be alarmed, and turned
its eyes over the water and over
the air. The abundance of winds, excess
of waves, the drowning and rising of breath.
That’s all the plague wanted — new beginnings
rich with little luxuries, laughter, hope;
a chance to become something, something great.
All it needed was a torn thread tugged loose
here, and a trusting soul there, and someone
too tired to care. Thank you, the plague whispered.

Blaming

The name my mother wanted to call me
meant other, different, strange, babbler, brute.
I turned strange early — electricity
my plaything, books as bricks, teething on fruit
stones and gnawing varnish off planks of wood;
running with bears in my dreams, and naming
my dog for booze, my doll for she who would
never be forgotten (queen of gaming
and floodwaters and wars played out in words).
How curious it is, then, that my name,
my given name, was something else, like birds
embroidered on silk in rare colors, tame,
or rather tamed, forcibly, their wings clipped
so they will roost, sacred chickens on crypts.

-*-*-*-

The prompt for today was to do a deep delve into one of your names, which absolutely knocked me back, since I’d already done that on day 6! I called that poem “Naming,” so I couldn’t very well call this poem the same thing, but now, with all of this, I’m kind of thinking of them as a pair, even though they are very different.

Eroding

Last winter when it still hurt to breathe, cold
snapped like a muscle out of shape trying
to do something it can’t, the drywall told
the house it had enough. It was crying
for help that never came. After the thaw,
the drywall dissolved under paint, puffed up,
ballooned, stretched, cracked, and crumbled. Now, worn raw,
the same thing happens to my legs, roughed up,
worked loose from the skin in. Epithelium
fluff and flake, lamina swell and flower
with unusual colors (blush, mauve, medium
plum, faint slate, deep mulberry) counting hours
through barely visible shifts. Hands flicker
over skin, fingers shimmering with glitter.

Sleeping

The virus screwed itself into my cells,
twisting communication lines, breaking
code, inverting instructions. The bells
ring at night, my blood pools all day. Waking
like a hamadryad from hibernation,
wondering why, when everyone else sleeps,
why still leafless and bare. Claudication
reversed, cold pain crawls up from toes to knees
as I cocoon in fleece and furs. That freeze
is the sign of high noon’s warped heat baking
the cold sleeper into a fluffy sleeve
like a human Baked Alaska. Shaking
doesn’t warm enough. The body repels
vulnerability, recodes its shell.

NOTE: The NaPoWriMo prompt for today involved using terms from two dictionaries at opposite ends of a cognitive spectrum, a Classical Dictionary (from whence came “hamadryad”) and a Historical Science Fiction Dictionary (from whence came “cold-sleeper”). The form is a somewhat circular variation on the classic Shakespearean sonnet, with the rhyme scheme: abab cdcd dbdb aa.

Fixing

This novel disfluency of my body,
as it stutters between start and stop, between
up and down, surely appears to be shoddy
engineering: A valve open or closed, clean
when it should be oiled or smudged when it should be
clean, a dial that needs to be tightened a bit
to stay on the intended setting. Go see
if the water pressure holds steady. A split
tube could cause a leak that’ll only get worse.
What if it’s not a hardware problem, what if
something is wrong in the software? Now, don’t curse,
God forbid, troubleshooting is hieroglyphs
crumbling and corrupted until that zing
when it snaps into focus. Check everything.

Singing

“Life could not better be,” my song today.
I’ll let Danny belt it out, and whisper
along in the background. “Luckiest girl
on the planet” to follow. What went right?
A day almost like beforetime, when I
could walk if I wanted and still breathe, twirl
as if music is lilting or play twister
and not fall. The luxury of an airway
uncluttered, muscles not withered, and hey,
look at me: hefting cast iron when Mister
Ladyhands feels unwell, lays down, and curls
on the couch, leaving the food prep to blue skies
and me, suddenly able and headstrong,
making noodles with grins and a singalong.

Wishlist

My body has a list of things it wants,
but, being nonverbal, it’s not talking,
and as a commensal being, what haunts
my mouth’s desires might not be what’s rocking
my microbiome’s sweet spot. Get in vogue,
old fogie, croaks my bones, move! My brain blurs
as if someone smeared oil on the windows
of my eyes. It wants sleep, while ears prefer
listening to drums in the dark. My foot
threatens to cramp unless it gets its way
(a bedtime banana), but then the gut
says no, and the bladder echoes hey, hey,
no way are you having a drink at this
time of night. Requests?, I ask. My wrists hiss.