tsunami as misguided kwannon
her hypervigilance such that
everything becomes a piercing
a harrowing she can’t turn off
her superpower a wound
a lightning rod / and sponge / speaking
the language of wounds to wounds
like echolocation that dopplers
the contours of another’s sorrow
against her own ricocheted song
or touch subtle as the naked push broom
of a star-nosed mole’s tentacles
nuzzling the bruised flesh of worms
or a nose for muscling out fresh blood
old ghosts / the sweet fat of lost dreams
like a winter-lean bear come spring
or feathery antennae’s raw quiver
pinched to ash by the hot sparks
of disconsolate pheromones
her nervous system a glitter
of neurotransmitters on fire
an electric-chaired switchboard
short circuited / fuse blown
she’s the exposed nerve:
exuviated snake / hulled bean
husked cicada / chaffed seed
peeled grape / shucked clam
she’s the conduit / aperture / cracked
mirror to all that’s scintillant and broken
until her compassion mushroom clouds
and swells like a fever / a red infection
a rising tide of salt tears
for the world’s fractured core
how could she possibly stop herself
from sweeping it all into her broken cradle
to soothe and rock and weep over ?
(her fingers itchy to pilfer and spare
what’s plush and tender
like the rabbit stolen by the moon)
how could she possibly stop herself
from the mercy of washing it all clean
in her terrible estuary of lamentations ?
First appeared in Sugar House Review.
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Lee Ann Roripaugh is the author of four volumes of poetry, the most recent of which, Dandarians, was released by Milkweed Editions in September 2014. Her second volume, Year of the Snake (Southern Illinois University Press), was named winner of the Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in Poetry/Prose for 2004, and her first book, Beyond Heart Mountain (Penguin Books), was a 1998 winner of the National Poetry Series. The recipient of a 2003 Archibald Bush Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship, she was also named the 2004 winner of the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, the 2001 winner of the Frederick Manfred Award for Best Creative Writing awarded by the Western Literature Association, and the 1995 winner of the Randall Jarrell International Poetry Prize.
Her short stories have been shortlisted as stories of note in the Pushcart Prize anthologies, and two of her essays have been shortlisted as essays of note for the Best American Essays anthology. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Roripaugh is currently a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review. She is also a faculty mentor for the University of Nebraska low-residency M.F.A. in Writing, and served as a 2012 Kundiman faculty mentor alongside Li-Young Lee and Srikanth Reddy.
