Oceanic Read online




  Note to the Reader

  Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size:

  Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

  Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible.

  When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.

  Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.

  This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.

  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