PARESTHESIA

By Tracey Knapp / Issue 10

I.
Overprescribed Prozac, Some parts of my body—
my legs, arms, head—might suddenly flush
with a quick wave, a wash of rush just
beneath my skin. Not goosebumps exactly, or pins
and needles. A soft swarm of nerves scattering,
a subtle ripple beneath the surface of the hive.

II.
It’s New Year’s 1999 and the world
is about to end or begin: a warehouse,
bass amps, strobe lights. I release
myself into a pool of similar bodies
all high on ecstasy. Ten different hands massage
my legs, arms, head. Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’
didn’t need a DJ: Too high to get over, too low to get under—
My ears are having a moment. My hands reach through
the pile of fake fur and feathers, finding some other flesh to touch.

III.
So today, on my way back to the doctor regarding these weird
waves of numb, I watched a man with a cigarette step
and then stop and then sit down in the middle of the sidewalk, an orange needle
fall from his palm. He didn’t stumble. He slowly sank into the ground
the way that I imagine most devoted would do: a slow, humble drop
from knees to hands to head to ground. How his body must have felt in
that moment: a flood of warmth too good to walk on. I stopped for him.
I let it overcome me, too. Then rushed in the door to fix the feelings,
to alter things a little less this time.

TRACEY KNAPP is a poet living in Berkeley, California. Her first full-length collection of poems, Mouth, won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award and was published in 2015. Knapp has received awards and scholarships from La Romita School of Art in Italy, Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. Her work has been anthologized in Best New Poets and The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems, and has appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, Five Points, The New Ohio Review and elsewhere.