with language from Angela Pelster, Charles Simic, David Sedaris,

Miranda July, Annie Proulx, and Kathryn Nuernberger

 

You don’t need to fight discomfort. How else

could a person come up with this stuff?

 

A light that shines between the brake lights

that you can turn on

 

to indicate that you have no destination,

the inertia

 

of grief, the sound of heaving, the aubergine

nightmare. After this, we can never speak of it again

 

—all my hunger. But listen

I remember an afternoon fresh

 

out of college. I pressed my cheek against the pavement

in prayer. Sunshine stood in the doorway

 

in droopy pajamas and said “It’s ruthless out here,

I know.” I did my best to ignore the sharp glint of her,

 

underlining the good bits in melted butter

as the blade dropped down on them.

 

I refilled my ice cube trays and realized

life as I knew it was officially over.

 

It is actually hard to write something framed

by a border of crab claws.

 

I’d describe myself as looking

a bit like the scar from an infected wound.

 

I still see the pale line of myself in each mirror,

a fish gone belly up.

 

(But who is she? I’ve never noticed

her before. What do I fear

 

I will find, shaking

the laboratories of the mind?)

 

I remember I’d practiced

getting dirty.

 

I was so used to being alone,

to deciding the how and when of everything,

 

how many times

my thighs disintegrated into waves of contractions.

 

(She breathed in, she breathed out

and when she wouldn’t oblige

 

it was a game.) But what I mean

is a sharp map of the memory

 

of a year following

a year following a year—

 

a selective story of what happened

and sometimes of what it meant.

 

If you’re tempted,

put a camera in front of your eye.

 

I tried it, to reach down inside

towards the real,

 

the slow

pound of the sea.

 

When you jump in—

 

And you have to jump in—

the cold stops your heart

 

for a second—see—

and then it comes back in a seizure

 

of beating

that makes your vision blur.

 

(I don’t think it does hers.)

 

In there, I’m laughing with my head on the table.

(She has watched me spend my time—

 

a great labor, the growing

of blisters and rashes.

 

But now I am back.)

I’m tired of going

 

somewhere, I want to be there.

 

One day, a photographer—

if I happened to look that way—

 

began to change this in subtle ways.

You will see it

 

in ten years or so. The developer is slow

to produce an image.

 

From out there, I will have miscarried

 

the truth

(inosculation)

 

of light and shadow.

Here, let me show you.

 

No, it’ll be ok, just place your eye here,

look through.

 

Can you believe it?

I do one thing

 

and also

its exact opposite.

 
 

 
 

---

 

 

SAM LIMING’s poems have been published in Palette Poetry, Hawaii Pacific Review, Leavings, and The Spotlong Review. She has an MFA from the University of South Carolina, where she served as editor for Cola Literary Review. She currently reads for The Adroit Journal.

 

The art that appears alongside this piece is “l’amicizia” by GRETA KOSHENINA.