Posted 2/3
Having woken in my own hot arms,
my own hot body clinging to the sheets,
and the sweat of me, and the snow
beyond the snow, beyond the snow
out the window, I strip naked,
lie on the marble, let the cool of it
move to my bones. It is something
to be on fire, my last best burning
in the winter. It is something
for the heat of a life to collect and collect
in the small of your back, the blades
of the shoulders, a kindling, a kinder
reminder. How when you were young
the women on the porch said,
it’s better than the alternative, and because
you were a fool, you doubted them,
because you were a fool, you thought
beauty was whole, something to be
observed, slick as a magazine page,
to be desired like so many mouthfuls
of cake, to be revered, a cock-eyed
crown, shiny, and without fear
of drowning, of going down, of depths
unknown, but now that you have
woken in your own hot arms
in a winter with its own sort of war,
you know better. Don’t you?
“The Alternative” is a poem from the collection Everything is Temporary by Artist-in-Residence, Nicole Callihan.
On September 29, 2020, Nicole Callihan was diagnosed with breast cancer. A double mastectomy, a lymph node dissection, radiation, and hormone therapy followed. All the while, she committed to her everyday practice of making art. Many of the recordings were originally posted to the weekly open-mic series, Wednesday Night Poetry; the images that accompany the poems were selected from her Instagram collection @thebluepitcher. These are poems and notes she took in the months that followed her diagnosis.
See Nicole Callihan read her work below:
