Cheryl Clark Vermeulen

Looseleaf

On the underside of Queen Anne’s lace a shimmery green fly’s

fungal guts are congealed to its canopy—a roof for its death?

humility? a return to where eggs would be laid?

Squid deposit their eggs on the seabed, let them grow or die on their own.

The mothers of one squid species fan the waters every 30 to 40 seconds

for as long as nine months to bathe the masses of eggs in fresh seawater

The ocean doesn’t want me anymore.

I resisted bathing for fear of no longer recognizing my smell

Hermes, the one so full of trickery, wanted to be swaddled and to break off

and fend for himself. Almost rocking, reading, on the train, I saw a woman

bite her tongue, bit it several times, still rocking (what I caught loosely among

my bump into ectopia the flowers in the bathtub the trees

on the subway a lush garden in a pocket riot police

in the woods squid in a bunker a wife on the underside

of a fern, a birdhouse, look, in the lake

a speech bubble alone ghouls in and out everywhere

Poppies shakier than tulips in a wind

I can see everybody’s baby but I can’t see mine

An air bubble is floating

in the gutter at the bay of my feet

The Almost

You can keep

or dispose of

the remains.

Someone will ask

[ ]

Once you urinate

you can go home

a convalescing

inchworm. In time

the erasure near

complete—hCG

at the lowest, say 15.

[ ]

Someone will follow up

on your body in which

you will ravenously believe

in newness. Are you

with me in your body?

[ ]

Lie on the shore out of the sun.

It is your summer. You may be

lip-synching or a long haul from

what’s new? How’s your summer?

I am waving at you, though,

our bodies taken

to sailing on syllables too.

The Almost

I need to make another decision about you, body.

Your endorphins are a charade.

Your symptoms a meandering poppycock.

Your nerves a tangle of pains, here, now there

the onlookers ask me to explain.

When I’m not screaming, you may be at an 8.

I name you rivulet and throw in some stones

no argot will take hold, 911 for an ambulance.

When the gurney arrives, it is one big maxi pad

that may sop up my blood. In the ER,

the physicians explain to a man one bed over

that he will get his last foot amputated.

Hearing their broken Spanish, more mangled

than not, I cannot muster enough

energy to yell that he deserves an interpreter—

my husband and I cuss and whisper and my stretcher

gets rolled by without my infant protest.

CHERYL CLARK VERMEULEN is an Assistant Professor in Liberal Arts at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Poetry Editor at Pangyrus, and mother of twin boys. She holds an M.F.A from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Recent poems appear in Split Rock Review, Bombay Gin, Sixth Finch, Small Portions, among others. Her chapbooks include This Paper Lantern (Dancing Girl Press) and Dead-Eye Spring (Cy Gist Press).