dear water,

I take you into my mouth

not the salt surprise of your ocean kin

massage your surface with my body

tension at our skins

you let me under where I listen

no distraction of air

breathe to your pulses

blue moving things

wave scratch

sucker fish bottom suck

freshwater snails’ gracious

paced calligraphy trails

distant deep horizon blur

& I fail

oxygen free

break surface

gasp my unevolved lungs

more birdsong

than bass

Swell

I break the surface calm slight ripple in the sky’s reflection blue against

blueblue liquid blue ether blue blood without oxygen blue bounce

baby wave slight tickle at my edges hackle I want full

on crest and trough travel from the center pick up

height lengthen my wavelength

frothy I love that whitecap feel silk muscle curl flex curve

releases blue rogue I join my kin we breathe the same

wind-charmed angles / geometric swells I lust constructive

interference we play surface high / lows

low / highs while underneath churn /

rotate we tidal I forget my fetch birth the scenery (blue!)

the breeze that calls me wavelet

powerhouse magnets we multiple liquid entities collect ourselves ROAR

in advance Break. Sandbar.

Then shore.

sandy fringe of our deepdeep Big Lake fashion we punch

the edges

reach the limit of our tongues

earth moss root cigarette

butt plastic bag child’s left

pink sneaker metal beer cap cigar

tip backwash

High Risk Erosion Area (HREA)

perhaps death

is like this

an erosion of one element

into another

we let go of the last

breath to swim & float

underw

ater

those fluid microbial beginnings!

no other

shore

no beached rescue

suspended between deep &

remembered sky

flashes of light

memories discharge

we dissolve

become whitecap

ped

wave

on our favorite lake

a movi

ng

thing

[Lake Michigan] Diva

I am my own fresh mistress / all fluid I swirl

multiple ways / my body unruly /

I rip the seams / gape into entrances / slam the ramparts / the

reinforced private property /

I’m a public entity / indiscriminant in my toil / my

levels rise / I’m giddy with overflow / my laughter, rush

of rip current belly howl / my body

undulates blues greens unnameable hues /

I harbor my kin:

sturgeon, old friend / sea lamprey,

you metallic violet beauty /

standard bass of different mouth sizes, large or small I take you all / underwater panther part

dragon protects the bling of copper in my parts /

I can take too /

got myself a griffin years back / fur trade vessels / my mouth

the Michigan triangle / I portal airplanes and ships into my deepdeep /

I like my pretty play things / different textures

to rub against / I like a good rub / sometimes

a frenzy: piers, breakwalls, lighthouse lights, fog horns / you try

to tame my whitecapped desires,

sillies / to navigate me with compass and sonar /

fuel to the fire, which, elements considered,

I can put out / rock paper scissors / water drowns

them all / objects fall to my bottom / hypnotic,

features lifted by descent,

snail pace ballet to the

silence of

my deepdeep /

my belly lined good: naval wreck skeletons, stonehenge circle, unknown

critters mating /

you litter my surface with buoys

(bottlecaps, nets, oil, pop cans) hook things

on pretend ground / pretend

stable / rally your sea legs because my horizon is

forever / you try

and trace my edges / cartographer’s wet dream

beach tourism boon /

I swell / I surge / I rise /

I spill blue

❃❃❃

Stephanie Heit (she/her) is a poet, dancer, and teacher of somatic writing and contemplative movement practices. She is a Zoeglossia Fellow, bipolar, and a member of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. Her poetry collection, The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System, 2017) explores the seams of language, movement, and mental health difference. She is completing a hybrid memoir poem, Psych Murders, about her experiences with shock treatment and memory loss and that enacts a murderer as noir character stand-in for suicidal ideation. Her other project, High Water Detours, documents through somatic engagement the effects of Lake Michigan’s rising waters. Her work most recently appeared in Ecotone, Anomaly, Bombay Gin, Midwestern Gothic, Clade Song, Lime Hawk, Dunes Review, Typo, and Disability Studies Quarterly. She lives on Three Fires Confederacy territory in Ypsilanti, Michigan where she creates Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space, with her wife and collaborator, Petra Kuppers. www.stephanieheitpoetry.wordpress.com