Jessica Le | Issue 6
Poetry | the year is unknown and we are running / through alleyways.
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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