by Nicole Callihan
All in by Nicole Callihan
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
Born, I cried,
by Nicole Callihan
that my husband was never
a breast man; that I was wasted
on him, my stepfather once joked;
that the doctor can make nipples
of scar tissue, though they flatten
over time, or do not take at all;
that the lady can airbrush color
on my areolas, though she warns
against the deeper pinks, as I’m
getting older; that I’m getting older;
that there are calcium pills
to counteract the pills that leach
the calcium from my bones,
and other pills, and others,
and the cold water, too,
with which I swallow it all down.
______________________________________________________________________
Nicole Callihan writes poems and stories. Her books include SuperLoop and the poetry chapbooks: A Study in Spring (with Zoë Ryder White, 2015), The Deeply Flawed Human (2016), Downtown (2017), Aging (2018), and ELSEWHERE (with Zoë Ryder White, 2020). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Find out more at nicolecallihan.com.
by Nicole Callihan
On the beach, asking questions of the wind,
it was the horse conch I straddled,
but what was it I thought I could know of the wind
that it did not already know of me?
It is a Monday in July and having no poisonous flowers,
no magical seaweed, not even salt on my skin,
I lunch on salmon in plastic, separate the flesh
with more plastic, sip bathroom sink water
from more plastic still. I consider 450 years from now
when this plastic will finally, if it’s weak, decompose,
and I am grateful I will be dead by then,
that my daughters will be dead, that their daughters
will be dead, because I do not want to imagine us
standing vigil, remembering this very summer day
and how well the plastic held the salmon and the water.
As the years go by, my thirst gets deeper. I keep
meaning to ask my mother to write me a prescription
that will make me skinny and sober and solemn,
but she is busy too, the shit-for-brains ex-husband,
the vials of poison, the Baked Lays. She recommends
only the latter and slips me a map that takes me years
to realize only leads back to her. But I’m talking about
the wind, or I’m talking to the wind, talking with,
and the wind is acting lovely, is brushing my hair
from my face. When Ella’s hands are dirty, she holds me
really tight and says, I love you so much, mama,
I love you sooooo much, and she wipes the grease
all over me, and I say, Oh, I love you too, until I realize
I am a napkin. Let me suck your nipples, mama, she says.
No more milk! I say and point to the plastic cup.
She’s too old for this. And so am I. But in plastic years,
we are hardly even born. In plastic years, I would only be 1,
and barely 1, and unable to form words yet, and so could
do little but sit on the beach and pretend my shell was a horse.
Giddy-up, I would say, Giddy-up, but it would sound
like nothing. Everything starts out sounding like nothing.
And, probably, in the end, everything sounds that way too.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nicole Callihan writes poems and stories. Her poetry books include SuperLoop (2014) and Translucence (with Samar Abdel Jaber, 2018), and the chapbooks: A Study in Spring (with Zoë Ryder White, 2015), The Deeply Flawed Human (2016), Downtown (2017), and Aging (2018). Her novella, The Couples, will be published by Mason Jar Press in summer 2019. Find out more at www.nicolecallihan.com.
by Nicole Callihan
Born, I cried,
and growing, I cried.
Gathering the broken egg, I cried.
Making the pancakes, eating the pancakes,
cleaning up after the pancakes, I cried.
Watching you swim to the deep area, I cried.
Watching you return to the shallows, I cried.
When my husband could not love me
like I wanted, I cried.
When I could not love my husband
as he needed, I cried.
When we loved each other anyway, I cried.
And then, there was the pulling of the weeds,
which I did all morning, crying,
and the watching them return,
which I did all afternoon, crying.
Now, evening, and what am I to do
but pull the weeds again,
and let the mosquitos suck on me,
and watch the stars come out, one by one?
_______________________________________________________________________________________