these our silent silky pretenses:
ABI POLLOKOFF
walk past the courtyard pool you see every day & in the peripheral, gone the sweetened
clump of algae brimming over the cobbled edge. gone the sticky bluish greenish
thrush tonguing the reeds & watergrasses & fishbellies. bleachcleaned into blooms of
milky cataract, this unsettling reflection.
in fact: blank. in fact: gone. to look into a mirror & not see your own face:
unresolved impulse turned to curl along your own tongue. to see something
& not recognize the self in it. these our unswept cores, our own detritus brimming
out our edges & our edges so dismantled into fractaled urge there’s nothing left to
connect. sit at the edge of the wishing pool & wish for something to envelop. something to
hold. something like the algae & even in its sightless state it’s still a pool
made for wishing. & the algae, it’s just looking to bind itself to someone else’s
body. to belong. you can’t tell the body not to respond but you can tell it how to move.
look at your notself in your notpool & notwish & wake up notalgaed & start all over
& over & over & over & you can’t offer yourself anything but the wish
you’re left with as you carousel around yourself singing the same watery songs. the same
milky disturbances. you’re at that part in the movie where a year’s gone by & your paths
cross at the coffee shop on the corner at the flowershop down the street
at the pool in the courtyard & the passing glance is all that’s needed to send your throat
back into its pulsing uncertainties. understand now the space a year fills,
how much has to happen for the wheel to return to where it first caught the stone. a throw
& yet not thrown at all, still caught & turning on its vicious vibrant slope.
clump of algae brimming over the cobbled edge. gone the sticky bluish greenish
thrush tonguing the reeds & watergrasses & fishbellies. bleachcleaned into blooms of
milky cataract, this unsettling reflection.
in fact: blank. in fact: gone. to look into a mirror & not see your own face:
unresolved impulse turned to curl along your own tongue. to see something
& not recognize the self in it. these our unswept cores, our own detritus brimming
out our edges & our edges so dismantled into fractaled urge there’s nothing left to
connect. sit at the edge of the wishing pool & wish for something to envelop. something to
hold. something like the algae & even in its sightless state it’s still a pool
made for wishing. & the algae, it’s just looking to bind itself to someone else’s
body. to belong. you can’t tell the body not to respond but you can tell it how to move.
look at your notself in your notpool & notwish & wake up notalgaed & start all over
& over & over & over & you can’t offer yourself anything but the wish
you’re left with as you carousel around yourself singing the same watery songs. the same
milky disturbances. you’re at that part in the movie where a year’s gone by & your paths
cross at the coffee shop on the corner at the flowershop down the street
at the pool in the courtyard & the passing glance is all that’s needed to send your throat
back into its pulsing uncertainties. understand now the space a year fills,
how much has to happen for the wheel to return to where it first caught the stone. a throw
& yet not thrown at all, still caught & turning on its vicious vibrant slope.
![]() Abi Pollokoff is a Seattle-based writer and book artist with work found in Palette Poetry, EX/POST, The Seventh Wave, EcoTheo, and Denver Quarterly, among others. Her work has been supported by the Jack Straw Cultural Center, Hugo House, The Seattle Review of Books, and more. Currently, Abi is the managing editor for Poetry Northwest Editions, the events manager for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, and a production editor in book publishing. She received her MFA from the University of Washington. Find her at abipollokoff.com.
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THE AUTHOR ON MUSCLE MEMORY
Muscle memory is such a powerful thing—it's absolute efficiency, a coded recognition of the body's familiarities, expectations, and routines. Muscle memory is a necessity when it comes to motor functions or tasks, but it can also be dangerous, as the body has no say in whether a memorized posture or experience is a productive or destructive one. And so, when the mind gets involved, it gets to weigh in on what the body's learned. So what happens when mind and body are in opposition? This poem plays with the idea of muscle memory as not just one bodily motion but a year's worth of pattern and time. It considers how muscle memory can be so subtle, so effortless to fall into—so necessary—that when the mind starts paying attention, it's just as shocked as the muscle was the first time it experienced the pattern-to-be. This poem explores what happens to muscle memory when the mind gradually becomes attuned to what the body's learned, what muscle patterns have been established—and which need to be broken. It considers how difficult it is to break out of that automatic experience and asks how to tend to a body that, when the mind knows it must begin again, must reconcile the need to abandon what it’s so deeply learned. & ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE KALEIDOSCOPED To have the ability to hold different perspectives and also to be the one holding up the mirror. |