Place and Body
by Ginger Ko
The body touching place, open to others.
The signifier of prevalence, of density, in the polite corrals of parking meters: can you feel one now? Place your hand on the meter, your palm becomes warm from the day, rounded top solid and scratched.
Rachelle Escamilla’s poems recall for the reader their own body, but always in the context of the endlessly disparate that surround us, ready to be identified and celebrated. These poems exhort you to remember and never forget, but also forget for now, to uphold the absence in the literal and the metaphysical: “You’ve never had hands like hers! / They taste like onions and can grip tomatoes. They / peel like onions/burnt almond body.”
This insistence is neither gentle nor coercing, it is a pure heart. The clarity acknowledges
the fucked-upedness of the patterns that randomness and memory create, but human
experience can re-make centuries-old cityscapes, illness, and connection between
people.
The free-feeling intention behind Escamilla’s language appeals to the retentions in our genes: “They found a cyst today and I laughed as I walked into the Saturday morning / sun in winter cold air caught in throat and I am ticked.”
Feel the familiarity of warmth and the oddness of sudden freezing humidity in your
lungs.
“They found / a cyst today sitting on my ovary, resting on – drooping on.”
“I thought of you / my my my my my Mister.” And in these poems’ generosity, we think of ourselves, our beloveds. In a way, it makes me ashamed—because, why any need to be gritty? Why any need for nihilism? When our poetry can be a natural extension of our physical selves, wondrous!
When we could be encompassing and unflinching in our acceptance of inspiration. I thought of you my my my my my ocean/streets/open-handed/politics/sex/offerings.
The signifier of prevalence, of density, in the polite corrals of parking meters: can you feel one now? Place your hand on the meter, your palm becomes warm from the day, rounded top solid and scratched.
Rachelle Escamilla’s poems recall for the reader their own body, but always in the context of the endlessly disparate that surround us, ready to be identified and celebrated. These poems exhort you to remember and never forget, but also forget for now, to uphold the absence in the literal and the metaphysical: “You’ve never had hands like hers! / They taste like onions and can grip tomatoes. They / peel like onions/burnt almond body.”
This insistence is neither gentle nor coercing, it is a pure heart. The clarity acknowledges
the fucked-upedness of the patterns that randomness and memory create, but human
experience can re-make centuries-old cityscapes, illness, and connection between
people.
The free-feeling intention behind Escamilla’s language appeals to the retentions in our genes: “They found a cyst today and I laughed as I walked into the Saturday morning / sun in winter cold air caught in throat and I am ticked.”
Feel the familiarity of warmth and the oddness of sudden freezing humidity in your
lungs.
“They found / a cyst today sitting on my ovary, resting on – drooping on.”
“I thought of you / my my my my my Mister.” And in these poems’ generosity, we think of ourselves, our beloveds. In a way, it makes me ashamed—because, why any need to be gritty? Why any need for nihilism? When our poetry can be a natural extension of our physical selves, wondrous!
When we could be encompassing and unflinching in our acceptance of inspiration. I thought of you my my my my my ocean/streets/open-handed/politics/sex/offerings.