All in by Annie Stenzel

Summoned

SWWIM Every Day
by Annie Stenzel

by Annie Stenzel



            (with a deep bow to Bruce Lee)


That’s when she said it: be like water.
or maybe it was, Oh Annie!
just be like water.
And I wanted to, then.

But water behaves or misbehaves
in all those mysterious ways.

Ocean water alone does a dozen
different things—before breakfast.

The Mississippi is a different creature
from the Nile.

And what about ice,
which is absolute water.

Or water forced by a massive dam
to drown a canyon? That’s one thing.

The run-off after helicopters dump
scooped-up water on a wildfire? Another.

Or maybe she meant a forest pool, quietly
hosting water-striders.

Well, remember how shocked we were,
in science class, to find out
the human body is 60 percent H2O?
I’m already a quick cascade through a weir.

______________________________________________________________________


Annie Stenzel (she/her) was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her full-length collection is The First Home Air After Absence. Her poems appear in Atlanta Review, Chestnut Review, Gargoyle, Kestrel, Lily Poetry, Nixes Mate, On the Seawall, SWWIM Every Day, Thimble, and The Lake, among others. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she lives on unceded Ohlone land within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.

The new normal

SWWIM Every Day
by Annie Stenzel

by Annie Stenzel


A building on X Street is gone now.
What did it look like, now that it is gone?

My memory for some things is excellent.
For some things my memory is no good.

After those nights in the hospital, the doctors
were satisfied with my condition. Am I?

All those years in which I saw the body as a mere
vehicle to transport my mind to new places.

Now this: the body contains my eyes;
the eyes that harvest joy for my spirit.

The body contains my ears, eager to hear the song
of water as it rushes through an empty valley.

And the body contains a beating heart; these flutters
draw my hand to my chest like a magnet.

Write about me on a piece of paper, fold it
and then open it up. Is it blank again?

______________________________________________________________

Annie Stenzel (she/her) was born in Illinois, but did not stay put. Her full-length collection is The First Home Air After Absence (Big Table Publishing, 2017). Her poems appear in print and online journals in the U.S. and the U.K., from Ambit to Trampoline Poetry, with stops at Chestnut Review, Gargoyle, Nixes Mate, On the Seawall, Psaltery & Lyre, SWWIM Every Day, Stirring, The Lake, and Trampoline Poetry, among others. A poetry editor for the online journals Right Hand Pointing and West Trestle Review, she now lives within walking distance of the San Francisco Bay.