Episode 116: Finding Flow

Finding flow in modern life is increasingly challenging, Slushies, but we sure found it here in two poems by Erica Wright. Loosely defined as the melting of action and consciousness into a single state, flow in poetry allows us to fully inhabit the world or experience conjured up by the poet. Nothing serves to distract or pull the reader out of the poem. How do we get there? There isn’t just one way. It helps when the poem’s form is attuned to the pacing required by the subject matter or focus. Strong beginnings always help -- and there are two fantastic ones here -- as well as a system of imagery that’s both relatable and unexpected. In “Marine Biology”, we see a conversational style used in parts of the poem that’s deeply grounding, and in “Too Many Animal Stories” the poem’s form supports its dense mosaic of images and moments.  

 

This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist is A.M.Mills whose song “Spaghetti with Loretta” now opens our show.  

 

At the table: Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, and Dagne Forrest. 

 

 

Erica Wright's latest poetry collection is All the Bayou Stories End with Drowned (Black Lawrence Press). She lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with her family where she enjoys looking at the mountains and not camping in them. 

 

Socials: Twitter @eawright, Instagram @ericawrightwrites, Facebook @ericawrightauthor, Author website 

 

Marine Biology 

 

Not even my dog knows me, hovers 

outside the bathroom as I wash blood 

from the porcelain, wipe up the floors. 

 

I feel more at ease with the mess 

than the pain. We’re not supposed to 

talk about that anyway, my fleet 

 

of would-be mothers who never labored 

but birthed something too.  

Mine half-seahorse, half-anemone 

 

like something you’d find in an off-season  

coastal gift shop after looking for whales 

and not finding any whales. 

 

And now my skin turns blue  

as if my veins are submarines  

surfacing after too long underwater. 

 

Did you know the Navy studies sharks 

in hopes of making better ships? 

Can you imagine? Mariners on megalodons.   

Let’s name them after our ancestors. 

Let’s hold the notion of them 

inside our heads until they’re real.  

 

 

Too Many Animal Stories 

 

In the same town where a man’s gun discharged, 

killing a woman across the street, we ordered  

 

sandwiches and watched tourists rent inner tubes 

to hold their bodies up in the river below. 

 

I’ve been sick for weeks now, bad sick 

at first, and now I can hold myself up. 

 

You started grinding your teeth at night, 

and it hurts to move your jaw in the morning. 

 

We joke about low points. We joke  

about how we’ll never leave this house again. 

 

Of all the days to miss, I can’t say why 

I latched onto that one in Helen, Georgia. 

 

We find a movie about the Trans Am Bike Race, 

and I make a joke about my dad’s old car 

 

with a phoenix on the hood, its wings 

spread with such precision that they never spilled 

 

over the sides. Sometimes a snake hid underneath  

and was so long it could stretch its body  

 

from one side of the two-lane road to the other— 

tail in one ditch, head in the other— 

 

a perversion of that joke about the chicken. 

The thing about being sick while the world has stopped  

 

is that I start to wonder if it’s all a carousel game, 

and we’re being punished for trying to jump off. 

 

When I push myself off the bathroom floor again,  

the tiles won’t stop spinning. Asbestos.  

 

I remember the real estate agent warned  

us about asbestos and not to take them out ourselves. 

 

I like the bathroom. The porcelain tub feels like ice 

when I rest my head against the side, wait for stillness. 

 

You take out the trash for us because of the rats. 

I don’t mind them, but once when one ran  

 

across my foot, I couldn’t get clean enough after.  

The neighbors coo over our new dog,  

 

leave chicken bones for her, which we pry from her teeth.  

Sometimes the incisors scrape my skin, and she never  

 

apologizes for her nature. I apologize for mine  

all the time. I’d prefer to be hearty, the kind of traveler  

 

who could take a cross-country train alone  

and sleep sitting up, living on trail mix and Coke. 

 

Not the one who needs sea bands. They sound like 

the bracelets of some strong-willed mermaid 

 

who doesn’t care what anybody thinks of her, 

but they’re cheap elastic with plastic eyes. 

 

Outside my window, the wind harasses the trees 

and their new leaves, which are less impressive  

 

than the old ones. Last year, a grim lived there,  

and I’d make up stories for him before bed.  

 

Not that he slept. Not that I know of. 

There once was a hellhound who loathed  

 

the predator rigamarole. He disliked 

the rending of flesh and gnawing of bones. 

 

The howling he could take or leave. 

One day sheep wandered below him. 

 

They smelled of honeysuckle and dirt. 

They didn’t bite each other then pretend  

 

they were joking. He sewed his costume right away.  

There’s not much more I can say about the rat 

 

from earlier. He fell from a trash bag  

and leapt at me, tiny claws digging into my shoe. 

 

A medium-sized rat. They say they’re more  

afraid of us than we are of dying.