"Descent"after Apollinaire

Click here to listen to Meghan O'Rourke read this poem.


I was born a bastard in an amphetamine spree,
lit through with a mother's quickenings,

and I burrowed into her, afraid she would not have me,
and she would not have me,

I dropped out down below the knees
of a rickrack halterdress,

sheeted, tented knees, water breaking, linoleum peeling,
and no one there to see but me,

I woke on the floor as if meant to
put her back together, to try to hold on to her

like a crate to a river, as if I'd been shipped down
to stand straight while in the misgiving

she said I had a dream of thirty-six sticks
floating down a river and a dog who couldn't swim

and I could not swim, I slipped from her grip
in a room where two orange cats stared like tidy strangers

at a world of larger strangeness,
and I had no name. I was there at her breast

and I thought I could see her, the swag of her hair, the jaw, the fearing,
but I barely saw, I went sliding down the river

from a house in which it was sweet to sleep
and the cool of the sheets

was never cool enough, the imprint of the bedded bodies
two geese diving at once.

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Meghan O'Rourke is Slate's culture critic and the author of Halflife, a collection of poetry.

For Slate's poetry submission guidelines, click here.

Click here to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.

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