swamp elegy

by Nikki Ummel

           chasing sleep         i stuff black needlerush       in my ears           it roots fibrous & lush 
     inside  this clapping skull       where the ph of my blood rises      with tides           i acidify       
               climax             with marsh  hush             outside            my childhood home               
 oh there’s   too much oxygen            algae blooms               i breathe               stuff the list of
[what happens when things go wrong]             into my gums               soak in           smell this   
      four-day bender      a trait inherited       from my father        our family      once saltwater      
       
             flipped brackish             after my mother gave that backwater bitch            her cunt              
   leaving the rest of us          to flop           ​in the salt pannes            but high tide       always swoops     
        steals     the clang     the broken bottles                      all weep            all saltlines          
   marshes migrate          avoiding war         put your back to the door      father said     no peeping     
not a peep         all mother’s moodiness         still hear          the creak     the torn purple mouth         
 
as  floodlines    carve holes in living shorelines         too much oxygen                  i worry    
         this maudlin ripple            break it over my darling            her pearl mouth               the only
one to choose me     over   nesting       over   migration            no peeping            not a peep 
             still i hear         my mother’s cunt        clacks            searching for high ground
    after the estuary recedes           will  i            will  i              become            marsh cordgrass                                                                                                                                                                                          my mother after all?

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Nikki Ummel is a queer writer, editor, and educator in New Orleans. Nikki has been published or has work forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly, The Adroit Journal, The Georgia Review, and others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and twice awarded the Academy of American Poets' Andrea Saunders Gereighty Poetry Award. She is the 2022 winner of the Leslie McGrath Poetry Prize. She has two chapbooks, Hush (Belle Point Press, 2022) and Bayou Sonata (NOLA DNA, 2022). You can find her on the web at www.nikkiummel.com.

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