Lithopedion
On Monday the politicians slither into the governor’s mansion
for a cookout, hungry old white men in dark suits feasting on
greasy hot dogs, drunk on the cheap wine of other people’s freedom,
chuckling smugly at the crowd howling outside the wrought iron gates.
A kinky haired full figured black delegate stands flanked by her muscular
dreadlocked well-armed bodyguard, beseeching the protestors
to stand and fight, to get out the vote, to hold on to hope.
On Tuesday the lawmakers convene in extraordinary session under
the golden dome. Inside the chamber the men are briefly reviewing
their knowledge of the female body, pooling masculine ignorance,
codifying their authority over the uteruses of West Virginia. One delegate
says “If you’ve got a burning building and you can save almost all the children,
but not all of them, would you do it? I’d burn the building.” In the corridor
women are chanting, guards are dragging them from the gallery.
Votes are tallied. The ban is passed.
On Wednesday I sit and watch the dozers knocking down abandoned houses
across the street. I think about the population hemorrhage from our state,
60,000 people gone elsewhere in the last 10 years alone. I imagine dozer
treads as tight white entitled masculine skin driving over the hopes
and dreams and rights of our children, born and not born. Children
named Broken Foster Care System, Opioid Epidemic, Systemic Racism,
Lack of Economic Opportunity, Substandard Education, Malnutrition,
Abuse and Neglect, Substance Use Disorder.
If we can’t care for these children then how sacred are they to us really?
The dozer turns up muddy foundation stones as I browse online articles about
Lithopedians, otherwise known as stone babies. It happens more often than
you might think, a fetus dies inside the mother, and the body calcifies it
like some strange pearl to protect the mother from infection. In this case
a 91 year old Chilean woman had carried her 4.4 lb. stone child inside her
for more than 50 years, only discovering it due to x-rays after a fall.
Some days the mystery and pain of life is almost too much to bear,
but we still wake up and feed the dog, make coffee, put our daughters
on the school bus, go to work, and maybe in a spare moment gaze out
the window into September sunlight, wondering what it means to live,
or love, and what forces can turn a fetus to stone, or calcify a human heart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithopedion
Slow Stepper
O Tardigrade, your ancient strength brings me hope!
These are strange times we live in, to be sure, though
your 500 million year lineage has seen stranger no doubt.
It’s said you can be found from the mountaintops
to the ocean’s deeps, in boiling mud volcanoes,
tropical rain forests, Antarctic ice fields…
O Grandfather, your strong spirit lifts me up!
I was eating reheated pizza when the news came
of your Christmas Eve heart attack. I sighed
and thought “2021 isn’t done with us yet”
and remembered the days of summer, how perfect white
clouds stood guard outside hospital windows while your
troubled head rested on pillows with bag of red blood beside,
draining to relieve pressure on your brain, yet when you
woke you meditated with me, brought me back from worry.
O Water Bear, were you happy living in that rooftop gutter
in Denmark* when they found you? I sip my reheated coffee
and think of your silent suffering, resistant as you are to
temperature extremes, air deprivation, radiation, dehydration,
starvation, and wonder what it felt like when the white frocked
doctors cooled you to 0.01 degrees Celsius above absolute zero
reducing you to cryptobiotic tun state.
O Father, you’ve been through it all! The flushed vigor of youth,
forging of family, divorce, career, incarceration, Hawaii (we have
the picture of you in your bright flowered shirt), and always kept
your cool no matter how fast the world turned, though you also
drove too fast and wild scaring all us passengers, but you’re in
the doctors’ hands now with their lasers and stents and beeping
machines. If you get chilled we’ll bring you a blanket.
O Moss Pig, so far away from your green tufted heaven
they say you’ve been quantumly entangled! I wonder
what it means…Did they somehow partner you to me
here where I stand in the darkness beneath street
hemlocks waiting for my dog to pee? or maybe
to father in his hospital bed to the north
and everything that happens to each of
us is somehow reflected in the other,
our spin, momentum, polarization.
Some may be naysayers, my slow-stepper (tardus(slow)+gradior(step))
and claim the “entanglement was not meaningful”, but they’ll believe
the glow of the fluorescent shield* you’ve lent me illuminating
longest hospital corridors and deepest mud volcanoes
as we awkwardly stride together into the new year.
(*A team of scientists collected 3 tardigrades from a roof gutter in Denmark.)
(* Scientists have discovered yet another reason to be impressed with tardigrades; some of these microscopic, nearly indestructible creatures wear a glowing "shield" that protects them from ultraviolet radiation.)
https://www.livescience.com/tardigrade-quantum-entangled-experiment
https://www.livescience.com/tardigrade-fluorescence.html
I.
In the fastest shrinking small city in America
on a hot September afternoon, an amputee
waits in his wheelchair to cross the street.
An old man places carefully folded flag
in gray metal “flag retirement” box
on the corner to be shredded
or burnt reverently.
Local weatherman shows disquieting graphic,
little clip art fires burning across western states
which explains tonight’s blood red orb
sinking into the horizon.
II.
I read in a poem that all the virus in the world
weighs a gram, but it must be out of date
since a quick search yields an article stating
that all the SARS-CoV-2 in the world
weighs between .10 kilos and 10 kilos,
somewhere between the weight
of an apple and a toddler.
On a street in my city
a toddler stands holding an apple,
both are fully composed of virus,
spike proteins and filaments
of RNA vibrating and glowing
backlit by wildfires of COVID
spreading unchecked as hospitals
overflow with unvaccinated victims
of the delta variant.
III.
Friday morning I encounter a local poet
in the cool fluorescence of the dairy aisle,
both of us perhaps reaching for half & half
to cut the bitterness of our dark morning
liquids. I speak his name with excitement,
in thrall of minor celebrity…he is hesitant,
searching my masked face for recognition.
Later he tells me “You could’ve been
a convict, a former lover, or someone
who sold me drugs 20 years ago.
That you were a poetry friend
is much, much better.”
I think of my poetry friends and how
we spend our time stuffing messages
into bottles, tossing them off rusty
bridges, decaying piers, into lakes
and rivers and oceans, no idea
where they’ll come to rest.
We fish out others’ bottles, uncork
and drink down contents, bitter
and sweet, joyful and melancholy,
in sips and gulps, warm glow
of language filling
our bellies.
I reply to an old friend’s text,
then reply again, apologizing:
“Sorry, that seemed like an auto-reply”
He responds: “Don’t worry, the pandemic
makes everything weird, and time passes
in a new way it seems.”
A train whistle, a wind chime,
and a pair of black crows
sound their agreement.
"I sat down with him and I said, 'Sung-Jin, we're going to take a rat apart;
we're going to rebuild it as a stingray; and then we're going to use a light to guide it.'
And the look on his face was both sorrow and horror."
-Kit Parker, bioengineer and physicist
He speaks of biohybrid stingrays made of silicone,
gold, and rat heart muscle cells, an alchemy inspired
by aquarium visit with young daughter.
Just in time for Valentine’s Day the news comes of the next step:
biohybrid fish made of paper, plastic, gelatin,
and 2 strips of living human heart cells.
“In some ways, a fish is a pump, he says. But instead of pumping
blood through the body, it pumps itself through the water.”
He says the fish kept swimming for 3 months sustained
by nutrients added to the fluid around them
and I think about this as I step out for a jog
in the breezy 60-degree February sunshine,
how we left the warm briny waters of mother
and brought our lub dub pelagic hearts
along onto the dry land.
This week you messaged from the hospital
to tell me they had to fuse your lung
to the chest cavity, that you have maybe
6 months to live. Your one request
“that there is not a big deal made
about this. Tears and sorrow
and pity are not what I want
in my remaining days.”
I finish my run, head to the supermarket
past overturned shopping cart half submerged
in last big pile of sooty parking lot snow.
These are the things I buy to profess my love:
calla lilies, pineapple, grapes, strawberries,
avocados, stilton cheese, sushi, champagne,
potato chips, frozen pizza, ice cream,
beer, and toothpaste.
Go home. Walk dogs. Water dogs. Wash dishes.
I read in your card how you’re waiting to hear
the spring peepers. You’ve ordered 60 trees
to plant in April; walnuts, cedars, oaks.
You’ve gone to visit a 600 year old white oak
tree in Logan. “It was pretty amazing.” you say.
Did my first ever marathon last Friday. 26 miles! Had done 21 the week before with lots of hills and crazy terrain, so I was pretty sure I could do 26 even though I haven’t really “trained” for it. When you run that much there is a strong mental component, but it is also interesting to see which muscle groups start to fatigue first. For me it was quads/thighs and I wonder if some strength training would help, or if there is only a certain amount of lactic acid the muscles can handle.
At any rate, I jogged past this odd collection of dolls between Dunbar and Charleston. I tend to keep a slightly lower profile with my love for creepy dolls, but these folks are putting it all out there right on the main drag, seems to be associated with a sort of ramshackle antique store, which wasn’t open. Maybe I’ll stop in again sometime?
Short words/interpretations for each photo here, feel free to add your own in the comments:
St. Sebastian is known in popular imagery for being tied up and shot with arrows. However, this did not kill him. He was rescued and healed by St. Irene, only to later be clubbed to death for trying to warn Emperor Diocletian of the consequences of his sins. St. Sebastian is known to intercede and offer protection from the plague.
In my country, the new plague is the opioid epidemic. For the first time on record, you are statistically more likely to die from opioid use than from a car accident. The children suffer for our sins. Who will intercede on our behalf and offer protection from this plague?
When children die in cages on the border of the land of the free…When young punks sneer in the face of a native american veteran…When russians decide the outcome of elections…When the great grandchildren of immigrants scream “Go back to your country”…
Haven’t posted in a bit, since we moved to a new city last August. Well, rest assured there are plenty of creepy dolls in Charleston, WV! Daughter Violet was interested in picking up some old barbies for a DIY project. Not sure whether to call her my protégé or just partner in crime…Anyway, we headed down to the local Goodwill, land of all things unloved and unwanted. Found a whole laundry basket of barbies in all states of disarray, and also this lovely vintage armless doll. She has a pullstring on the back, but nothing happens when you pull the string. Just have to use your imagination I guess. Will post more pictures of our finds soon.
Oak Crow Sings 