Radial Scent

My body tauter, poised to carry.
When I pitch forward
I tumble inside.
 
Each time I try,
an algal bloom
replaces language’s surface.
 
Ruby-red & unmoored,
waves over laminate surfaces…
Everything alive aching
for more aliveness.
 
I love the world,
push it away reflexively.
Make songs like
negated charges on a circuit.
Syntax arches towards
the back of
a neck. Inside emotion:
a corralling of emotion.
 
Love in the larval stage:
terror of surrender.
Unraveling, a path.
 
Words were not made for us.
They are above, we submit.
 
We are like the rock beneath
the water,
 
even if we created the water. 

Copyright © 2017 by Sharon Wang. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 6, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.