STIRRING
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
Founded in 1999, Stirring is one of the oldest continuously publishing journals on the internet.
Stirring is an electronic quarterly journal.
AMANDA HOPE
Watching a bicycle pitch forward
over its front wheel
its rider gripped
by relentless physics
it is impossible
not to be aware
of the penalties
of being embodied--
how unlikely it is
to have been alive at all,
and how preposterous
that we expect to continue
as though we are not
water balloons
which may break
at any impact.
If I had to know this
all the time, without relent
the doctors would need to prescribe
something to me--
not because I was wrong
but because truth untempered
would take from me
every moment before
whatever is going to happen
finishes happening--
the way a stiff breeze
sent apple blossoms
across the seat of my car
as I opened the door
or the perfect quiet
of the house
as my beloved bikes away
on some errand--
doctor, fasten the lid
on that kind of knowing
or else, let me dose myself
with the Five Remembrances,
a bit more each day
like Mithridates
until the shock of knowledge
doesn’t send me
crawling from my numb
skin every time.
The problem with the dead is they can’t surprise
me anymore. They have already said
everything they ever will, and your voice
inside my head sounds more like mine.
You said the first loss is the only loss,
and each one after just reopens the same wound.
When I was small, I threw my bears
from my crib to go for help,
but they never returned from where I flung them.
You befriended every damaged bird,
in love with the loss of them, hoping one day one
would come back from the Ever with some news.
And I, living, living—boorish, careless, ungainly,
so far from that curtain that you and others
pressed their cheeks against. What did you see
in me? I walked around in your loose shoes,
trying to seem wise. I never was.
If you’re ever able to, send word.
Amanda Hope lives in eastern Massachusetts with her partner and cats. A graduate of Colgate University and Simmons College, she works as a librarian. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Salamander, The Lily Poetry Review, The Hellebore, Mason Street Review, and more. Her chapbook, The Museum of Resentments, was published by Paper Nautilus in 2020. You can find more information about her work at her website, http://www.amandahope.net.
