Patricia Clark

Midsummer Paralysis

A nerve was severed in my jaw—I remember numbness.
Numbness is a way of saying goodbye but staying.
Your numb cheek doesn’t feel like it’s yours.
Numbness is missing 500 million birds migrating overhead.
Is my wrist resting on the chair arm pulsing or is it numb?
The redbud embodies shame, numb because of Judas.
Movement is opposite and antidote to numbness.
In the jostling of travel, there is sore numbness.
Someone lies crushed under rubble, in Gaza, numb.
She put gold-orange drops in to numb my cornea.
My fear was specific—quicksand numbing my ankles.
When running’s forbidden, numbness embraces.
Beneath the petals of numbness, a scent of rose hip tea.
The probe touching your foot here, here: is it numb now?

Author: Patricia Clark

Patricia Clark is the author of six volumes of poetry, including Sunday Rising, The Canopy and most recently Self Portrait with a Million Dollars. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Plume, and Slate, among others. She received the 2018 Book of the Year Award from Poetry Society of Virginia for The Canopy. Her new book, her seventh, O Lucky Day is forthcoming in January 2025 from Madville Publishing.

 

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