paroxysm

there was everywhere the harrowed wheat—
crude, rough, and muddy. the edema atop my foot,

blood the body re-absorbing over a hard month,
and I could hardly cram inside—my swollen tarsal

bone—into my boot. I hobbled, downtrodden,
downtown to the offices that paid me. I took care

and delicate footfalls, hastening as best I could, in my
needlepoint jacket, goosepimples flecking the neck—

my spirit having long felt eviscerated, carved out with
a mellon baller. I missed bliss and would have it again:

mellocremes and whiskey sour, a full Hunter’s moon at
Equinox, a tendril of thistle outside the municipal building,

Harvest Cheddar SunChips, pink Nikes, three clear meteorites
seen during the Perseids just out of city limits, out in some

serious woods. a hex key, a cowl-neck sweater, yellow onion
and canned pumpkin purée and heavy whipping cream. a chunk

of fluorite made into an obelisk, friendly barn cats, luscious
names of fish bait: nightcrawlers and beemoth and chicken

liver. The family of flowers named Gerbera, buttered rum soap,
vintage Bakelite bracelets, polenta on sandwich bread. I limped

against uneven terrain, shouting no more, no more of me, no more of me
will be taken! My spirit was as lumber—dried, seasoned, sawed into

crude forms I never once wanted for it. I quit the office that paid
me. I held hands with myself, bought a straw basket to lift any solid.

I dispersed, at long last, into the wheat crop—spirited, returned,
the injury scarcely there, behind me, out of earshot.

Note: The city of Bloomington, Indiana was founded in 1818 and was described in its first years as “crude, rough, and muddy.” Citation: “Bloomington Indiana History – State & County History.” History & Heritage, Visit Bloomington, 2018, www.visitbloomington.com/about-us/community/history/.

EMILY CORWIN is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Indiana University, as well as the former poetry editor of Indiana Review. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Ninth Letter, New South, Yemassee, Gigantic Sequins, THRUSH, and elsewhere. She has two chapbooks, My Tall Handsome (Brain Mill Press) and darkling (Platypus Press) which were published in 2016. Her first full-length collection, tenderling was released from Stalking Horse Press earlier this year. She was a finalist for the 2018 Pleiades Press Editors Prize and recently, her manuscript, sensorium was chosen as the Editor’s Choice selection for the 2018 Akron Poetry Prize.