the year is unknown and we are running / through alleyways.

Poetry | Jessica Le | Issue 6

Jun 30, 2021

Swimming Lessons

I am getting good at not thinking about them and I do this

by stringing myself up on the same pattern.

The first course of action is opening the blinds which

I do not dust enough.

If I were doing this right this would be

point A, the abandoned chair in the corner,

my radio and clock on the shelf with batteries

in them that work. Now that the sun can come in

all bright I can see where the dust jerks

like a school of startled fish if I think too hard

in a certain direction. There is no corner I don't

know about in here but there are corners I avoid

my gaze from. When I was young I was afraid

of pool drains for the same reason. My fear

of being swallowed by strange hard edged shapes

led me to be really good at geometry. In my head

god speaks to me and says in blue

do you ever think about the things that you

ruined. Most of the time the radio is there

so I can change the subject and hear him talk

to me instead about deals on kitchen appliances in my area.

The clock is there so I can look at it

and change the batteries when it stops working

and adjust the minutes to be two minutes earlier

than when I actually need to wake up so

I am always slightly ahead but always in the past.

Point B, the time is (now) and

the little goldfish corpse in the bowl starts to thrash

again. The water jumps from the toilet into the bowl

and my hands dry themselves upwards like blessing

and the goldfish stares at me,

not really seeing, but telling me

it is very hungry.

You say you hear us and that you understand the urgency*

the year is unknown and we are running

through alleyways. again and again we pass

by poster ads for strangely-shaped watermelon,

get it in a square! get it in a triangle! hell, get it

in whatever shape you like. they drip red paint

onto the ground. lives spent chasing and being chased,

breaking into houses already broken

into — green-leaf wrath and choking. behind the

ivy we make fun of graffiti covered walls, turning weather warnings

into dance numbers, and in the background there is always

the record playing on repeat: it's not too late. it's not

too late. it's not too late. so by the time we make it

to the dust street, clambering onto the top of the car,

it's nearly dawn. we're taking in the prairie, arms extended,

wondering if the dove will come down

on its own or if it needs to be beckoned.

*from Greta Thunberg's speech at the U.N. Climate Action Summit on September 23, 2019.

Previosuly published in Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Books, 2020).

Seasons in Sorbet Flavours

Ode to kitchens: the steam unfurling like petals and the element a burning

blue eye staring back at me. What do you want I ask. It doesn't respond so I

turn it up higher so that it can see me better. This is childcare. This is looking

after the meat while it bathes itself. This is turning it over, patting it firmly

with salt. This is us leaning away from each other our feet firm on the ground

you holding the bow steady and my hand pulling the string taut. Did you

know? From this angle I can see out the backyard and the moon has landed

softly on the grass and it shines bright enough to hurt a little bit. Inside my

belly I feel the thorns intensify in bursts, like gulps of fresh air or exhaling in

the winter and watching the ice fall to the pavement.

The moment straight after an injury,

post tear, post biting into the

hard tendon of a leg, which is

chewy and keeps the most

flavour, post rush of synovial

fluid, the expansion of the gym floor

and the nets like bones, I learn

how my body works.

I swear I saw something. I did. In a moment of clarity I think about how

vulnerable we'd be, four old Asians and me, if another car pulled up next to us.

And then we actually do see it and it's green, the light, and it moves slowly,

and smears the sky like a bleeding wild animal, its soft body and my soft body

combining through the breath I put out in clouds and frantically suck back in

until I can't remember what I've seen but know by the way my arms are lit up

and boiling that this night is one of many. So the curtain can come down again

and so can the nets, which I bundle up, and the net poles, which I pull out of

the floor like uprooted red trees to plant again when the summer comes back

in an exhale that I can see in clouds.

It's this: first, the gym light becomes

its own halo, a crown of light

I drag myself towards, a foot bent backward

as if poised to kick. In playfighting it's

about intention and there I can look

at my hurts as if they come only

under a night sky, bustling out the car

in an empty field, just a bit of snow

on the wheat, which is still for once.

Again it is winter. Time is a weapon is a computer mouse is a click away from

signing up onto the wrong website. No I do not want this subscription. I want

summer. I want fruit sorbet. I want to know why making sorbet only takes

fruit and some syrup. Where's the ice? I'm losing time. Once I blinked and my

sock came off in the middle of the street and then the movie started playing

again, an hour and a half in, my sorbet eaten clean in a little bowl on the side

of the table, the sounds of a café seeping into my left ear and coming out the

right. We call this nobody's fault. I try to peek through my fingers to see if

things will look different but they just look upside down. I want a subscription

to fruit sorbet. I want ten little spoons. I want things to make sense when I

talk about them. I want coughing things up to hurt less. And I want the sun to

come up the next day from the other side of the road and to burn such a

blazing pink and red and yellow that we all can see the future, for some

reason, and there is a moon there and it is beautiful.

Jessica Le is a writer from Ottawa and an undergraduate student at Western University. Her work has been published in Watch Your Head: Writers & Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Books, 2020), Western University's Symposium Anthology, and Cold Strawberry Collective's Alt Mag.

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