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Oceanic
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No water, no life. No blue, no green.
oceanographer Sylvia Earle
Contents
Title Page
Note to the Reader
Self-Portrait as Scallop
When I Am Six
On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance
The Origin of Feathers on My Windshield
Sea Church
Mr. Cass and the Crustaceans
Penguin Valentine
from The Rambutan Notebooks
Two Moths
In Praise of My Manicure
End-of-Summer Haibun
When Lucille Bogan Sings “Shave ’Em Dry”
The Two Times I Loved You the Most on a Farm
Aubade with Cutlery and Crickets
When You Select the Daughter Card
At the Pumpkin Festival My Lips Burn Bright
Self-Portrait as Niagara Falls in Winter
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate One Second before Waking Up
The Falling: Four Who Have Intentionally Plunged Over Niagara Falls with the Hope of Surviving
Forsythe Avenue Haibun
Meals of Grief & Happiness
Invitation
Inside the Cloud Forest Dome
I Could Be a Whale Shark
Love in the Time of Swine Flu
Self-Portrait as C-Section Scar
The Cockroach Responds
Andromache Begs Hector to Reconsider
When I’m Away from You, I Feel like the Second-Place Winner in a Bee-Wearing Contest
In the Museum of Glass Flowers
Dangerous
Travel Mommy Ghazal
Flowers at the Taj Mahal
While Riding an Elephant, I Think of Unicorns
Self-Portrait as an Egg-Tempera Illuminated Manuscript from 1352
Letter to the Northern Lights
Perch Bones and Apple Aubade
This Sugar
Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth
Psyche & Cupid: A Reimagining
Venus Instructing Cupid to Torment Psyche
Psyche Considers Her Last Letter from Cupid
Upon Hearing the News You Buried Our Dog
The Body
The Pepper Kingdom
One-Star Reviews of the Taj Mahal
First Time on the Funicular
One-Star Reviews of the Great Wall of China
The Pepper King Returns
Starfish and Coffee
Naming the Heartbeats
Chess
My South
Bengal Tiger
About the Author
Also by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Special thanks
OCEANIC
Self-Portrait as Scallop
When I Am Six
CHICAGO
My mother waters the tomato & pepper plants. I steal drinks from the penny-taste of the garden hose. It is my favorite drink. I am six & think to cross the street by myself from time to time, but never do. I am six, my sister is five, & we hide inside clothing racks at the store just to feel the black-sick fill our round bellies when we get lost, lost, lost from our mother. I am six & I am laughing with a mouthful of cashews. I think nuts is the funniest word I have ever heard. I am six & I break all my mother’s lipsticks & glue them together & put them back in her bathroom drawer. She’ll never notice. Sometimes I find sad envelopes, the ones with red and blue stripes, meaning these envelopes fly, meaning thin feathers, meaning bird with a little worm in the beak. Envelopes from her father, I think—she snatches them from my hand & says, No, no, where did you get these? Now put them back.
On Listening to Your Teacher Take Attendance
Breathe deep even if it means you wrinkle
your nose from the fake-lemon antiseptic
of the mopped floors and wiped-down
doorknobs. The freshly soaped necks
and armpits. Your teacher means well,
even if he butchers your name like
he has a bloody sausage casing stuck
between his teeth, handprints
on his white, sloppy apron. And when
everyone turns around to check out
your face, no need to flush red and warm.
Just picture all the eyes as if your classroom
is one big scallop with its dozens of icy blues
and you will remember that winter your family
took you to the China Sea and you sank
your face in it to gaze at baby clams and sea stars
the size of your outstretched hand. And when
all those necks start to crane, try not to forget
someone once lathered their bodies, once patted them
dry with a fluffy towel after a bath, set out their clothes
for the first day of school. Think of their pencil cases
from third grade, full of sharp pencils, a pink pearl eraser.
Think of their handheld pencil sharpener and its tiny blade.
The Origin of Feathers on My Windshield
The pelicans dip their brilliant sloppy bills
into their tired shoulders and there is a certain bridge
in Florida where you have to be careful not to hit them
as they fly across windshields. I lost the only picture
of me taken by a man who used to be the boy I loved
when I was fifteen. When this man last visited me,
all the pretty rivers in town were tannin-stained
from a certain oak-and-chestnut mess. We walked
carefully through glass galleries and a little bakery
that sold a single gold-dipped strawberry. I was the girl
whose hands gave up chewing through a dahlia long ago.
Even he has crawled too far across soil to turn back now.
And truth be told, so have I. I am like a man who prefers
the taste of his own tongue instead of the lips of summer.
My shadow and the shadow of sunflowers are the same.
Sea Church
Give me a church
made entirely of salt.
Let the walls hiss
and smoke when
I return to shore.
I ask for the grace
of a new freckle
on my cheek, the lift
of blue and my mother’s
soapy skin to greet me.
Hide me in a room
with no windows.
Never let me see
the dolphins leaping
into commas
for
this waterprayer
rising like a host
of paper lanterns
in the inky evening.
Let them hang
in the sky until
they vanish at the edge
of the constellations—
the heroes and animals
too busy and bright to notice.
Mr. Cass and the Crustaceans
Whales the color of milk have washed ashore
in Germany, their stomachs clogged full
of plastic and car parts. Imagine the splendor
of a creature as big as half a football field—
the magnificence of the largest brain
of any animal—modern or extinct. I have
been trying to locate my fourth grade
science teacher for years. Mr. Cass, who
gave us each a crawfish he found just past
the suburbs of Phoenix, before strip malls
licked every good desert with a cold blast
of Freon and glass. Mr. Cass who played
soccer with us at recess, who let me check
on my wily, snappy crawfish in the plastic
blue pool before class started so I could place
my face to the surface of the water and see
if it still skittered alive. I hate to admit
how much this meant to me, the only brown girl
in the classroom. How I wish I could tell Mr. Cass
how I’ve never stopped checking the waters—
the ponds, the lakes, the sea. And I worry
that I’ve yet to see a sperm whale, except when
they beach themselves in coves. How many songs
must we hear from the sun-bleached bones
of a seabird or whale? If there were anyone on earth
who would know this, Mr. Cass, it’s you—how even
bottle caps found inside a baby albatross corpse
can make a tiny ribcage whistle when the ocean wind
blows through it just right—I know wherever you are,
you’d weep if you heard this sad music. I think
how you first taught us kids how to listen to water,
and I’m grateful for each story in its song.
Penguin Valentine
Praise the patience of a papa penguin.
I don’t envy those dark, starlit nights
with only the occasional blush-green
current of auroras across his claws.
See how sweetly he holds the egg close
in his brood pouch? And I am certain
his fierce tenderness would scare
even a crabeater seal five times his size.
What exactly does the papa penguin register
in a nighttime that lasts two whole months?
During those days of no sun, does he
remember the particular bend
of his mate’s neck, that hint of yellow
near her ears? Or does he hunger for a slip
of hooked squid, worry the grand gulp of air
he must take, the concentration needed
to slow down his own heart? Praise
the faithfulness, the resolve, the lanceolate
feathers shaped like tiny spears, perfect
to poke through a cartoon heart and signal:
Valentine. And Valentine, I sing your praises
not because I know you’ll wait for me
like that (though I know you would
if you could), but because you never waver.
I don’t know how you know what direction
to look and how to listen for my return, even
when my call boils from the floor of the darkest
of arctic seas, even if, for now, all we can feel
is a cast of red crabs stretching before our path.
from The Rambutan Notebooks
Remember the archipelago even in shadow-time.
Remember in spite of all the storms, it’s still there,
full of sapodilla and salt. Remember the taste
will be just under your tongue when you rise up
and fight. Barbed wire and a gumbo-limbo tree
call you home, call you teeth and visitor. Each visit
here means a memory spill of your mother.
If a girl is retrieved from clouds, then what
is her throat now, what is her wrist and ear?
Where will she call home now?
I have been studying the word home
as if studying for a quiz, trying to guess
answers to questions before they are asked.
Soon a slight foam appears under a frog,
a promise of leg kick, a pulse toward
shelter even if all she sees now is mud.
I won’t ask the rambutan about its messy hair.
I know you are tired of trying to flatten
your hair into something it is not. When
it is meant to flap and fly in the wind-salted air.
Unplug the iron. Let questions of what is beauty
and what is not-beauty fruit down your back.
Sometimes it is possible to still embrace
the wildness of home, even if the lone window
in your room only blooms snow and more snow.
Two Moths
In Praise of My Manicure
Because I was taught all my life to blend in, I want
my fingernails to blend out: like preschoolers
who stomp their rain boots in a parking lot, like coins
who wink at you from the scatter-bottom of a fountain,
like red starfish who wiggle a finger dance at you,
like green-faced Kathakali dancers who shape
their hands into a bit of hello with an anjali—I tell you
from now on, I and my children and their children
will hold four fingers up—a pallavam, a fresh sprout
with no more shame, no more shrink, and if the bright
colors and glittered stars of my fingernails scare you,
I will shape my fingers into sarpasirassu—my favorite,
a snake—sliding down my wrist and into each finger:
Just look at these colors so marvelous so fabulous
say the two snakes where my brown arms once were.
See that movement near my elbow, now at my wrist?
A snake heart can slide up and down the length of its body
when it needs to. You’ll never be able to catch my pulse, my shine.
End-of-Summer Haibun
To everything, there is a season of parrots. But instead of feathers, we
searched the sky for meteors on our last night. Salamanders use the stars to
find their way home. Who knew they could see that far, fix the tiny beads of
their eyes on distant arrangements of lights so as to return to wet and wild
nests? Our heads tilt up and up and we are careful to never look at each
other. You were born on a day of peaches splitting from so much rain and
the slick smell of fresh tar and asphalt pushed over a cracked parking lot.
You were strong enough—even as a baby—to clutch a fistful of thistle and
the sun himself was proud to light up your teeth when they first swelled and
pushed up from your gums. And this is how I will always remember you
when we are covered up again: by the pale mica flecks on your shoulders.
Some thrown there from your own smile. Some from my own teeth. There
are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night. I want to spread
those little meteors on a hunk of still-warm bread this winter. Any trace left
on the knife will make a kitchen sink like that evening air
the cool night before
star showers: so sticky so
warm so full of light
When Lucille Bogan Sings “Shave ’Em Dry”
I blush quicker than a school of b
lue jack mackerel
arranging itself into an orb of dazzle to avoid
nips and gulps from the dolphins who’ve been silently
trailing them, waiting for them to relax. When I hear
her growl—her scratch-thirst and giggle when she drops
swear words pressed to wax—I can’t even look him
in the eye when I ask him to give it a good listen
with me. But he does, ever patient, and we both get
a light bless of sweat on, a bright address that still maps
us to each other after all this time. When I read him
the lyrics, the pink of my cheeks is like the pink
of an orchid mantis. Just when you least expect it,
the pretend flower will reach out and snatch a butterfly
from the air. When I say flower I mean how her song
blooms in the cicada-electric Mississippi night. When I say
pink I mean nectar I mean a long kiss good and sweet.
The Two Times I Loved You the Most on a Farm
after Dorothea Grossman