As Though It Were a Small Child
I attend to the snow, hour after hour, marking where lightprunes its borders until an antelope appears out of the grassbelow, a yellow-green leap, misshapen in the eye thencorrected in the mind because this is the immigrant's work,isn't it, to see what isn't quite there yet, or any longer.To hold on, then, to what cannot be called truly an image, ora memory, but something more vivid, less accurate, a stomach'sgurgling in the dark, that organ to which neither music or languagebelongs. I wake up these days, a new mother again, watching,waiting, to understand what to offer, how to serve, by which Imean, organize my body around what cannot be spoken. It's notthat there aren't countless names for it, antelope being justone of them, something you might recognize, too, if only fromthe haze of afternoons spent once upon a time, innocently, withthe Discovery Channel or at the zoo, where the foreign and exoticthat have only power to survive but not to touch you, performthemselves at scheduled times with either bared teeth or hula-hoops.I had meant, of course to write a poem about love, but I keepgetting stuck on its conditions. For instance, it is below zeroagain today. I put my walls down and the snow blows intomy mouth, so when I say I love you, I love you, I mean, takewhat I have been given. It is not one way. I will swallow yourestrangements, too. I'm not afraid. Tomorrow an antelope mightbe a glacier, a book stitched of the heart-bursts of hummingbirds.
Feature Date
- December 5, 2023
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Copyright © 2023 by Cynthia Dewi Oka.
All rights reserved.
Originally published in The Journal.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Originally from Bali, Indonesia, Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of A Tinderbox in Three Acts (2022), a Blessing the Boats Selection chosen by Aracelis Girmay for BOA Editions; Fire Is Not a Country (2021) and Salvage (2017) from Northwestern University Press, and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (2016) from Thread Makes Blanket Press. A recipient of the Amy Clampitt Residency, Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, and the Leeway Transformation Award, her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, POETRY, Oprah Daily, Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of America, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere. An alumnus of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, she has taught creative writing at The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, Bryn Mawr College, New Mexico State University, Blue Stoop, Voices of Our Nations (VONA), and the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. For fifteen years, Cynthia worked as an organizer, trainer, and fundraiser in social movements for justice. Based in Los Angeles, she is currently working on film projects and a collection of short stories.
46.2
Columbus, Ohio
The Ohio State University
Faculty Advisory Editors
Kathy Fagan
Michelle Herman
Managing Editor
Hannah Smith
Poetry Editor
Amanda Scharf
The award-winning literary journal of The Ohio State University, The Journal contributes significantly toward the literary landscape of Ohio and the nation. The Journal seeks to identify and encourage emerging writers while also attracting the work of established writers to create a diverse and compelling magazine. The Journal has recently had poems reproduced in the Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies.
The Journal, originally titled The Ohio Journal, was founded in 1973 by William Allen of the English Department at The Ohio State University, and has been published continuously ever since. David Citino served as Editor from 1985 to 1990 and was a contributing editor until his death in 2005. Michelle Herman and Kathy Fagan became Fiction Editor and Poetry Editor, respectively, in 1990 and currently serve as Advisory Editors. The graduate staff has maintained The Journal’s commitment to publishing the best work by new and emerging writers around Ohio and the nation, including writing not easily classified by genre, excerpts from novels, longer stories, and other daring or wholly original pieces.
Over the course of its forty-year history, The Journal has published prominent writers such as Carl Phillips, Mary Jo Bang, John D’Agata, Denise Duhamel, Michael Martone, Terrance Hayes, Lia Purpura, Ander Monson, Brenda Hillman, D.A. Powell, Linda Bierds, Donald Ray Pollack, Maggie Smith, and Jericho Brown. The Journal is published four times annually: one print issue and three online issues.
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