Also, I was swimming today and thinking about how I almost drowned when I was 4. Luckily my grandmother's sister taught me how to swim right after, so I've never been afraid of swimming (not in pools at least). I was wondering if I could have been a swimmer when I was younger (our town didn't have a public pool, and I'm not sure if we even had a swim team). But then I'm not sure I could have been a good swimmer then. When I was younger I used to pull my head out of the water and flip my hair. My teacher used to yell at me for that. Well, maybe not "yell."
So, in honor of the poet I want to be (someday) and the swimmer I might someday become, here's a poem from my MA thesis: Vocabulary of the Unsaid.
I want to put some kind of disclaimer on this poem, but I will resist. (But somehow I did, by saying that I wanted to. See how I did that?)
How I Learned to Breathe
I fall through divisions,
under, before, beneath. Caught
in anomalous borders,
spaces between.
II.
He says, “I revived you.”
I studied him through
the bars of the bed.
What is “parallax”? What
is “represented”?
I filled in black lines with white.
III.
Memory hovers, nameless.
I could see myself
always sinking,
always on the surface.
Blurry, forever
coming into focus.
IV.
floating in her hands.
My face in, I blew, I breathed,
eyes open to the image
swimming beneath--
a watery shadow rises
and begins to fix.
3 comments:
What a wonderful poem--I love how it ends, the great sound of that word "fix" at the very end of the very last line. Don't be silly about the poet thing--you are a poet. You are multi-genre, which is an awesome thing to be. It's like the triathlon. You are a tri-artist.
This poem reminds me of why I always think of you as a poet first. As Lisa said, a tri-artist, but a poet of the first order.
I was feeling good about all the limericks I have been writing but now....I too have always viewed you as a poet. Probably cause you wrote one for me. Keep up the good work!!
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