“Lucid Fever”, a Poem by Arah Ko
LUCID FEVER
Myself, your unhealthy
child; lung-scarred, rattle
breathed, a waif. I will always
fear drowning on the land,
abandoned by the wind
gods, kami kaze 神風, breath
of the sky. You spooned
medicine: black herbs,
elderberry, valerian,
painted frankincense
and tea tree perfume in
holy pockets at my wrists,
hollows of my throat. When
undertows snapped at
my ankles as a child, you
rescued me. I can still taste
seaspit vomit on the sand,
salt and kelp, a backwards
inhalation.
Once you start unbreathing,
the heart squeezes, innocent
of this failing. If I wear this halo,
I trust you to unbury me.
QUARANTINE POETRY: ON STEALING EVERYTHING
Despite having more hours than ever devoted to writing, I have struggled to be creative. The sweeping global repercussions of COVID-19, and our subsequent isolations, have filled me with existential, economic, and personal dread. When so much energy is consumed by stress and anxiety, little is left for writing.
In order to combat “not feeling creative,” I have fallen back on my favorite way to write when I’m feeling uninspired: blatant imitation. My undergraduate poetry mentor told us to “steal everything” and another professor assigned us to write about which pieces we were “most jealous of.” Imitative writing has, in my humble opinion, been often confused for plagiarism. What I, and my professors, considered “stealing” is more akin to the way Ezra Pound “translated” Eastern poetry until it became something so interpretive, it was a new poem.
When I am especially stuck, as I am so often in quarantine, I imitate another poet’s form. For “Lucid Fever,” I held loosely to the poem “Birch Skin” from Miho Nonaka’s recent book, The Museum of Small Bones, only I went backwards, starting with a lone line where “Birch Skin” ended with one. Nonaka’s poem concluded with the line: “yourself. My unblessed.” In my poem, I not only reversed the order of her freeform, three-lined stanzas, but also the perspective from “yourself” to “myself.” In its current draft, no one would suspect “Lucid Fever” of being a “Birch Skin” dupe – and it isn’t. Instead, a new, grandchild poem is born.
I superimposed my own meaning into the adopted “Birch Skin” form, exploring the concept of the “unblessed” and how my own experiences with asthma had to do with negative space, with the un-. While not being able to breathe has always been a specific fear for me, it has been adopted as a societal fear of coronavirus. A friend of mine in the Chicago area who had to be hospitalized for suspected COVID-19 said, “I’m not afraid to die. I am ready. But every night I am afraid I will stop breathing in my sleep, and not even know.”
Arah Ko is a writer living on an active volcano. Her work has appeared in Ruminate, Rust+Moth, Grimoire, SIREN, and others. Coronavirus-willing, she will be a rising MFA creative writing candidate at Ohio State University in the fall. When not writing, she can be found correcting her name pronunciation or making a mean pot of coffee. Catch her at arahko.com
We hope this inspired your day and brightened up quarantine for you. Stay inspired.
