“Poem in Which I Press Fast Forward” by Denise Duhamel

January 14, 2025Posted by

Denise Duhamel

POEM IN WHICH I PRESS FAST FORWARD

my young mother becomes my dead mother
my new car becomes a clunker
 
my blond hair becomes gray,
my favorite sweater, a rag
 
my beloved becomes my enemy
my enemy, someone I can’t remember
 
my past becomes a murky place except for a few sharp excerpts
my memory, a torn plastic bag, groceries spilling onto the pavement
 
my love of apples becomes a metaphor
my love of apples becomes my love of applesauce
 
my flat chest becomes a set of breasts that later flop
my bright pink scar becomes a faded white line
 
my childhood friend becomes a stranger, then a corpse
my childhood home becomes someone else’s home
 
my baby fat becomes adult fat
my new sneakers, worn and ready for Goodwill
 
my obsessions become ash
my fire, a cold sandwich
 
my scribbles becomes more scribbles
my wedding dress, a punchline
 
my glass of wine becomes my rewind
my beer stein, a pencil cup
 
my garbage becomes landfill
your trees, my kitchen table
 
my biggest problems dissolve
then bubble up years later like Alka-Seltzer
 
my belly laugh becomes a bellyache
my aversion to conflict becomes a migraine
 
my frown becomes a ray of frown lines
my dance moves becomes a skeleton rolled into an anatomy classroom
 
my childhood love of the sea becomes my adult political quest
my pet peeves soften into petty concerns then become peace lilies
 
my fall from grace becomes my saving
my savings become my coffin’s down payment
 

—from In Which
2024 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner

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Denise Duhamel: “I started writing the poems from In Which after reading Emily Carr’s brilliant essay ‘Another World Is Not Only Possible, She Is on Her Way on a Quiet Day I Can Hear Her Breathing.’ (American Poetry Review, Volume 51, No. 3, May/June 2022) Carr borrows her title from Arundhati Roy, political activist and novelist. In her delightfully unconventional essay, Carr talks about rekindling intuition in poems, offering ‘a welcome antidote to whatever personal hell you, too, are in.’ Carr’s invitation to be unapologetic, even impolite, gave me new ways of entering my narratives. Soon I was imagining I was someone else completely. Or sometimes I looked back at my earlier self, at someone I no longer recognized.”

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