At Night, the Wake (After Alice Notley)

First place winner of the Synapse Storytelling Contest for poetry. 

Even now, the wake

I forget the waves or I wish I was there

 I may have decided that the

        Wake will come yet 

Or I have thought so. I have

          thought that.

Even now the wake

And the morning still dreaming

     Of us

Darling, your time is now before and always it is always

a Good Time for you

The night rolls

I seem to think

The wake 

             on the beach in Grand Isle

It is not quite morning 

Only months before it will drown 

              the horizon 

So far from my tent

The wake is purple and blue 

            and eventually white 

Eventually there is nothing to see 

Past the ships and the otters (which we don’t see) 

             never do (but hope are there)

At night the wake is only 

reminder

Only Lucy on loop. 

Dancing as snow queen on the TV monitor

               How could you die with hair that red?

I am in the video too but that

Me is not shaken. Shaking. 

Even now, the wake 

Is not for me. It couldn’t be.

I am Jewish and our bodies 

belong to the earth. 

The best I can do is light a candle.

It is my grandmothers yahrzeit, after all. 

I think of the wake

And I think of those blonde children

In Dana Beach

They were so comfortable in the sea

We had started in Phoenix that morning

Could it be they

Had been here, even then?

Even now to wake 

Is slow. My arms are glued to my sides

You didn’t know that (of course not) did you?

It is the dis-located that 

Stuns

But shouldn’t 

Don’t be stunned. 

The Khruangbin song plays

Which tells me I used to be in love.

I don’t remember the feeling

But the lyrics come easy

And that is a kind of knowing love too 

Even now the wake 

Catches me 

In fluid grip

Bluntly formed I too am

                Viscosity 

measured

          In resistance

I catch myself 

When I speak names into existence

It is my favorite ritual 

Ellen

Lucy

Harvey

And for the living too, for you must also know you are real

Emily

Hayle

Cameron

Even now, in the wake of Ida

Another anniversary passes 

There is water that swallows whole cities 

There is water that purifies 

There is no water in Jackson 

It is too early to tell

If I will wake from this 

It hardly feels real

To be in this life this body this mundane glorious body 

Even when it hurts or is ugly 

I am sometimes ugly

Hayle goes home

She is reaching for miracles

I can’t do anything but sing her a lullaby 

It is not enough 

The lyrics come and I remember 

With you it’s always life or death 

The stakes have never been higher 

         Than your average Wednesday

I haven’t seen you in a year  

I almost vanished you

The waves have a way of rounding edges 

We collect sea glass from the bay

It is shallow for as far 

            as I would want to go

I look back and you are not in

my wake

Finally

our futurities dissolve 

Away from Texas 

             and the gulf 

I let the waves take me to shore this time 

In the wake of it all 

It is ok not to agree

That is a kindness, you know.

Grant me this one last kindness. 

I’m going to try floating 

All I need is my back and breath 

Even if

Even still

Even now 

I wrote this poem years ago, when I first arrived in California at UCSF. I felt my arrival was in the wake of past decisions and experiences, namely evacuating Hurricane Ida in New Orleans and love found and lost. I wrote this a week before reading Christina Sharpe’s "In the Wake: On Blackness and Being," which fundamentally shifted how I understood the wake and what it might hold, leading me to abandon this poem for some time. This poem is written after Alice Notley’s “At Night the States.”