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Eva Monhaut :: Two poems

 

Manatees

I spent that blistering summer, unabridged, flattened
like driftwood in the sharded-salt-sand, Anna Maria Island, 

Florida ‘08, coughing questions into my palms,
eyes dusting over the tangled branches of Adam’s arms. 

I tried to make sense of the heat, solve it like an
equation by pressing layer upon layer of pasty SPF-70 

sunscreen across his back while the bulbous manatees
somewhere subaqueous sunk their millstone molars into 

ragged clumps of tangy, sea-lawn. I wanted to watch them
exist, plug my nose, scrape the bottom of the world with 

my rented scuba-gear as they swam concentric patterns around
my miniscule, vegan body. Of course, I just remained, 

pallid, toes gutting the jagged, lethal ground before me,
hallowing and hollowing a path to Adam’s out-stretched 

body. I sighed, perpetually; cradled his cranium with my pinched-flippers:
he is all rough shell, all anger until you know him. 

 

Subaqueous

in the after-cloud, wire lungs bent
in the inhale, still trying to remember how
to exhale; I stare at the ceiling fan, humming, buzzing like concentric oars
searching through air for
answers. 

          I can feel it now
the subaqueous, the ancient call of life
from which we emerge and diverge 

          and I am afraid

so I hide in the underneath, the underground,
toxic sealed bunker, panic room, metallic grave
hidden deep sub-terra but I still hear the murmur, the ghastly, phantasmic panting of
a life secretly forming: building only to be broken, breaking, breaking apart, breaking away, shattered inside of my broken breaking
beaten body, 

          I can feel her now
separated in the subaqueous, just crystal
and malleable thought, flotsam on the surface now 

          I said, I am fucking afraid.

 

 

 

Eva Monhaut is an Honors English major concentration in Creative Writing and double minoring in French and Sustainability Studies at Indiana University South Bend; she will graduate in December of 2020. She enjoys writing poetry, reading copious amounts of books, drinking coffee from oversized mugs, cuddling with cats, lifting weights, and spending time in nature. Her published works include the poems "The Infant" & "Hay Mowing" in Brainchild Magazine (2020) and "Prayers" & "Fragments of Light: In Sepia" in Analecta (2019).

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issue twenty-seven :: January/February 2022

  Christopher Patton :: Glitch Apple Howie Good :: Three poems Kenneth M Cale :: Three visual poems Christian Ward :: Three poems Matthew Walsh :: POACHED EGGS Jeremy Scott :: Five poems

about :: where is the river

where is the river :: a poetry experiment is a bi-monthly poetry journal open to a variety of aesthetics, forms and experiences, with a preference towards showcasing work by emerging writers. There is no single path, nor any single way. Founded in September 2017. Edited by Kiefer JD Logan.