Poetry

Incontinence

When love gushed out
of me too cloudy –
not the amber
it should be –
and I couldn’t control
my permeability or the journey

of my capillaries,
I grew heavy
with liquid, gravid
with disease of the nut-
shaped gland lodged within
my twists of brain.
I wanted to run

backwards through ontogeny,
far from dry
land, for I couldn’t
concentrate or conserve
my wits or salts.
The sea seemed

the only safe place
to let go
and live again –
a return to where
it all began, before
the urgency and burn
of anything human.

Hahn, Susan. Incontinence. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993.