Poet of the Month: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Love in the Time of Swine Flu
Because we think I might have it,
you take the couch. I can count on one hand
the times we have ever slept apart
under the same roof in our five years,
and those usually involved something
much worse than this sort of impenetrable
cough, the general misery involved
with dopey nausea, these vague chills.
But this time, we can’t risk it—our small son
still breathes clear-light in the next room
and we can’t afford to be both laid
up on our backs with a box of tissues
at our sides. Especially now that I carry
a small grapefruit, a second son, inside me.
In bed, I fever for your strong calves,
your nightsong breath on my neck
and—depending where we end up—wrist
or knee. I fever for the slip of straps down
my shoulder, I fever for the prickled pain
of lip-bite and bed burn. You get up and come
back to bed. We decide it is worth it. I wish
my name meant wing. The child still forming
inside me fevers for quiet, the silence of the after,
the silence of cell-bloom within our blood.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the prize-winning collections, Miracle Fruit, At the Drive-In Volcano, and Lucky Fish. Her latest collection of poems, Oceanic, was published by Copper Canyon Press in April of 2018. She currently teaches creative writing and environmental literature as a professor of English in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS.
Our Poet of the Month series is curated by our friends at Poetry Society of America. The nation’s oldest poetry organization, founded in 1910, PSA’s mission is to build a larger and more diverse audience for poetry, to encourage a deeper appreciation of the vitality and breadth of poetry in the cultural conversation, to support poets through an array of programs and awards, and to place poetry at the crossroads of American life.
Love in the Time of Swine Flu by Aimee Nezhukumatathil from Oceanic. Copyright © 2018 by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Reprinted with the permission of the author and Copper Canyon Press.
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