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.
EMILY R. DANIEL
I could sit by the river to write if it weren’t for the parvo dogs dumped there, bellies filled with water, tongues tough and purple. If it weren’t for the soggy bank and its electric green which can’t be named. If it weren’t for my new shoes and their white soles, or the wastewater treatment plant upstream. I raise my eyebrows at the odor and think of Elvis tapping Priscilla’s forehead to remind her not to wrinkle her fair face with expression. Smile with the eyes if you must. Never furrow or scrunch when words will suffice. That anything is unsayable is a myth, like the idea that some women never age. Eventually, she looked 40 even if it wasn’t until she was 50. By then he wasn’t alive to see how long it took for living to settle into her skin. There are no outlets by the river. Where is the place that poems are built, what do they tunnel toward, and once I am there, how will I know?
Before my flight home, we toured the National Museum
of African American History and Culture. There were droves
of white teens on field trips, humming Taylor Swift songs
and talking about last night’s online poker game
while leaning on a glass case of Civil War weaponry.
In the present, I felt crowded by my people’s past and future.
I drove us there in a car that was not my own
as a way to manage my passenger anxiety. I’m safe, but
every time I press the brakes, I look to the rearview mirror
for the incoming crash, how it would send us into
the too-near car in front of us, pop and punch
of the airbags deployed, fat lip, bruised knuckles.
When the planes fly above the highway to come in
for a landing at Reagan, it looks like we can touch them.
They are a child’s toy descending in the wrap-around grip
of our hand. We duck instinctively when they are overhead.
In flight, I’m seated in the middle. They told us how
little room we would have, but the stranger next to me
seems oblivious to our always-touching shoulders. He takes
more because he needs more. I lean as far as this compartment
will allow, towards another stranger who also leans. She seems
not to need the contact. She has the option to avoid it.
Last night before bed, my niece placed her palms on mine
for the Think Fast game, her eyes wide and wild with a joy
I had forgotten. I asked her what she calls this feeling. She said
Fizz. Crackle. Brim. Her laughter a language as she strategized
the sound of her palm slapping my hand like a schoolteacher,
like a lesser evil, like a mother trying to practice restraint.
I laid my hands still where she could turn on them,
the sting so brief.
Emily R. Daniel's chapbook, Life Line, was selected as a winner of the 2020 Celery City Chapbook Prize. Her poems can be found in The Penn Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Waxwing, Porter House Review, and forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review, among others. Emily lives with her family in Kalamazoo, MI where she is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Western Michigan University and Poetry Editor for Third Coast Magazine. For more information, visit www.emilyrdaniel.com.
