All in by Nina Bannett

by Nina Bannett



She wonders why we both can’t inhale properly, all the I’m so weak, all the why don’t I die forced into my nighttime. A throbbing of over and over and good health isn’t what you want even though you have told me you will live to be a hundred and I tell you that you have gained a lucky thirteen pounds since your ninety-sixth birthday and your comeback is, that’s not a lot, I’m so alone here and for me to respond that I’ve lost both my parents would lead to suicide threats tossed at me, casually, pairs of dirty socks. I am a resting place, an old-fashioned hamper, or a washing machine, the top-loader at the bottom of your basement staircase, and when I would offer to save you a trip, two trips, you would troop down anyway, my grandmother-supervisor relentlessly checking, did you turn the right valve, or the left? One set of valves works constantly, the other intermittently and I don’t understand why we can’t work together. Wouldn’t I serve more easily as a machine if the pipes of my mouth stayed fully open?

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Nina Bannett is the author of These Acts of Water (2015) and a chapbook, Lithium Witness (2011). Her poetry has been featured in numerous journals including North American Review, Valley Voices, Bellevue Literary Review, CALYX, LUMINA, and WomenArts Quarterly. She is Professor of English at New York City College of Technology, City University of New York. See ninabannett.com.