Calliope, Clio, Melpomene, Urania, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Erato, & Thalia In That Order
By Michelle Aucoin Wait
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
The black-billed magpie sits on my fence
mocking me with its freedom, its high-pitched
yak-yak-yak. I, from the South, still don’t know
how to write about dry heat. I understand
humidity; can write verse after verse
about all sorts of things clinging
to wet bodies, dizzying in the dampness,
flying cockroaches, singing locusts, & boiling crawfish.
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
I want to be free, but I don’t want to catch
or kill. I don’t want to spread or meet
a super spreader on the street, so I find
sanctuary in the mountain woods. Last week,
it was an abandoned cave. The week before,
a fault line plagued with shiny black grasshoppers.
This week, I sit quietly on the wooded shoreline
of Lake Tahoe & allow her shallow wakes to soothe me.
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
The Calliope hummingbirds streak
emerald & ruby from one shockingly
purple monkshood to the next. The petals vibrate
with the tiny intensity of the Calliopes’ thirst.
Ovid, Wilde, & Joyce have written about the toxicity.
Twin Peaks revived aconitine in Season 3. I imagine
each brilliant throat constricting, each little star falling
mid flutter. I don’t want them to die, but death consumes me.
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
Three fists below the Big Dipper & a little
to the right, Neowise appears as a soft white blur.
I can no longer see its brilliant tail.
The mountain fire’s smoke has settled
in on the horizon. The deep reds produced remind
me there can be beauty after death. Across the sky,
Jupiter stares back at me winning “who will blink first.”
I play this game until tears burn at the corners of my eyes.
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
People are in the streets chanting.
Somewhere, Nina Simone amplified
tells crowds of marching people
Everybody knows about Mississippi goddamn.
In my house, the bass from “March March” makes
The Chicks record skip. I am safe here cursing
the skips. Other mothers are outside getting gassed.
Other mothers are afraid for their children.
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
My star gazer lilies blossomed.
In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
with a glory in His bosom
that transfigures you and me.
As he died to make [wo]men holy,
let us die to make [wo]men free,
while God is marching on.
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
When my husband comes home from work
with the day’s heat still clinging to his skin,
I am sullen. This is how I deal with things. For weeks,
I have been crying at the slightest
provocation. He walks around saying I’m sorry,
but has absolutely no clue what he is apologizing
for because none of this is his fault. This night,
I press my head against his chest, & we dance.
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
We have stopped sleeping upstairs
in our bed because heat rises. Downstairs,
I wear a sweater & thick socks as I work,
but I never adjust the thermostat. I will not
bathe until my next Zoom. My hair has become
a purple tangle of knots not unlike the puffy balls
of hydrangea my grandmother used to coax
to a deep bluish purple with buried Brillo pads.
It is summer here in Northern Nevada.
Thalia, your children dance with swords
and shields. Set your smiling face down
& let me mask this sadness. I sent all
of my children a message that warned
them not to open an email from me
about canned meat because it was SPAM.
They don’t understand my love of puns,
but for a brief moment, they laughed out loud.
*Stanza 6 includes a verse of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as written by poet, author, social activist, and abolitionist Julia Ward Howe.
It has been difficult for me to write during the pandemic. In the early months, I had just defended my thesis and was sick of looking at my own writing. Later, the solitude made me weary. Later still, I knew I just needed to listen and learn.
Mid-March was the last time my peers and I were mostly together. Before what is now known about COVID-19 was understood, many of the University of Nevada, Reno Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) graduate students went to the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in San Antonio, Texas. We wrote, we listened to writers talk about writing, we saw friends who had already graduated and moved on, we laughed and sang as we floated down the Riverwalk, and we took long walks in crowded public spaces and stopped to enjoy the ducks, a beer, and BBQ. We found ourselves seeking solitude amongst all the stimulation. Little did we know, it would be mere days before the pandemic would shutter the doors of businesses and schools and universities across the country.
For myself and the five other members of the graduating MFA class of 2020 this meant virtual theses defenses, Zoom readings, and no graduation ceremony. None of us knew exactly how to deal with this loss. For me and many others, it felt selfish to complain when so many people were sick, so many people were quarantined from their loved ones, so many people were dying. A good friend told me I was still allowed to have feelings. I cried then as I am crying now at the memory. Sometimes you need a good friend to validate your right to the occasional pity party. Time moved on, and without fanfare, my diploma came in the mail. I began trying to read and write more. I made Zoom dates with peers to write together, I set timers, I put my phone across the room. I was not going to let this degree go to waste. After all, I was officially a poet.
On May 25, 2020 George Floyd was murdered. I knew that my voice was not the one that needed to be heard.
I listened.
I read.
I watched.
I did not write.
I began watching what other poets were doing. I followed women on social media who have incredible collections of poetry out in the world. I marveled at their ability to still be productive. They were facing the same obstacles I was. Many of them had even higher hoops to navigate. They were homeschooling small children, directing creative writing programs, publicizing their forthcoming books in new ways and virtual spaces. I admired their dedication to bringing light into a difficult and dark time. I still could not write.
I turned to the muses.
Each stanza of this poem coincides with one of the nine muses, but most of the stanzas also demonstrate how I found comfort in the rugged terrain of Nevada. My graduate thesis is mostly about home—Mississippi and Louisiana. I spent so much time writing about places that I will never again live that I did not stop to look at the place where I live. No better time to explore the vast terrain of Northern Nevada than during a quarantine.* I have found comfort in her mountains, her lakes, her people coming together to fight injustice, her flora and fauna, and even her bugs. I also know that the comfort I have found came at a cost to the Wa She Shu, the Northern Paiute, and the Western Shoshone. I find myself, like others, navigating the space between comfortable and uncomfortable. I included the original words of Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in my poem. She wrote, “let us die to make men free.” It has since been changed to say “let us live to make men free.” This makes us more comfortable.
My pandemic reading or re-reading list—
Octavia Butler: Fledgling
Essays from Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s (forthcoming September 2020) World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments and her poetry collection Oceanic
Carol Anderson: White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide
Amy Lonetree: Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums
Lisa Marie Cacho: Social Death: Racialized Rightlessness and the Criminalization of the Unprotected
Natasha Trethewey: Native Guard
Tracy K. Smith: Life on Mars
Poems from Catherine Pierce’s (forthcoming October 2020) Danger Days
Edited by Lauren Muller and Blueprint Collective: June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint
Claudia Rankine: Citizen
Kiese Laymon: Heavy (I recommend taking a long drive and listening to this on Audible as it is narrated by the author)
Jesmyn Ward: The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, and her most recent novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)
* I made sure to pack it in and pack it out in order to minimize the need to interact with anyone in small towns where resources are limited. If you explore, take a safety kit, minimize interaction, and wear a mask in public spaces.
Photos/Michelle Aucoin Wait.
Michelle Aucoin Wait received her MFA from the University of Nevada, Reno and her MA from Mississippi State University. She teaches poetry, literature, and rhetoric. Her work has appeared or will be appearing in Tiferet, Maudlin House, Lady/Liberty/Lit, LandLocked, The Meadow, Porkbelly Press, and others. She is a transplant from the Deep South and now resides beside a mountain with her family and her four yorkies.
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