Surge

Go for a dip
in the honeyed bay,
drink the creaturely
smells of sea.
Float through winged
kelp, bladderwrack,
the foam of once-
live matter.
The body undone,
the skin porous.
Imagine, then,
your surprise
at the sudden slip
shape that swims beside,
sleeker than a dog,
too quick
for a good look.
Just the feel of heft,
muscular. Dark
head and silken form
bobbing on the animal
edge—how close
this animal edge. Brute.
Marvelous.
You keep
swimming, vowing
for it not to be more
than this.
Not to become
a metaphor for something
else, like a woman
entering
a vast new country
by the skin
of her clenched
teeth.
Let it just be this:
the body,
buoyed
by waves.
The gasp. Your held
breath.

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Grace H. Zhou is a poet and cultural anthropologist. Her poems have been published in Ninth Letter, Frontier Poetry, Longleaf Review, AAWW's The Margins, Kweli, Lumiere Review, The Hellebore, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD from Stanford University and is currently a President's Postdoctoral Scholar at the Ohio State University. An alumna of Tin House Workshops and Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writers Lab, she serves as a reader for Tinderbox Poetry.