‘Romer’s Gap’ by Tian-Ai is published in Poetry, January/February 2024.

Romer’s gap, supratidal, intertidal, subtidal, fly agaric, snailfish, and aphotic are terms I boned up on in scaling the text.

Italic print sets off three sections, headed by the tidal terms, and one quotation. There are no capital letters. The text is comprised of commands (draw back —) and noun phrases (fear of grief).

draw back —
fear of grief.
disdain toward
desired thing.

The speaker speaks to the speaker’s self in shorthand, as if jotting things in a Field Notes 48-Page Memo Book that fits in a shirt pocket or lab coat: perceptions, associations, phraseology registered on the fly.

— tsunami:
fly agaric.
herbalist porn fantasy.
vivisection.
simultaneous orgasm atop lab table.

Coherence emerges on the wings of inference when one notices punctuation. Periods are pivotal, helping to extrapolate statements from cryptic enunciations. Em-dashes and colons connote connective pauses. Of commas there are two; they’re helpful. Stanzas organize the flow; they capture discrete psychic events: lab experiences, biomarine observations, internet forays, carnal rumblings, note taking, perhaps staring out a window and letting a reflective mind roam (through window, cormorants / arrow into the sea.)

google medieval torture boxes.
google eradication of female
genitalia without mutilation.

carve orifice out of fruit.
toy with idea of sharing.
in sunlight, anemones

ball their fists.
write text.
delete text.
note several ways to hide.

That rare declarative sentence couching an arresting description — in sunlight, anemones ball their fists — is notable also for its violent enjambment spanning a stanza break.

Intrigue centers around certain of the speaker’s self-directed exhortations. They seem to reflect a grappling with the world and with feelings it lights up. Here are key imperatives sliced alive (vivisected!) from the poem:

draw back — […]
suppress memory.
unsuppress memory.
withdraw permission. […]

The poem turns a corner unearthing a childhood list of desired objects:

nautilus
cidada husk
tender zing of

freshly toothless hole —
permission granted:

The mementos are admitted to the mind’s workings. Perhaps they bridge the gap in the speaker’s own fossil record. The permission — to be impinged upon? bestow access? — withdrawn earlier is granted now, culminating in an achieved resistance, or perhaps a fortified self-containment:

emerge immune
to rapture.

Immune, not prey, to rapture. Thank goodness for facile conclusions forgone; the well-trod path would have led to rapture realized — a being sucked up rather than a taking hold.

The poem leaves me keepsakes. I make out a spicy exhortation which I can take on board, especially in my painting (sometimes in life):

for once,
careen.

I also borrow a clue on how to navigate poetry’s dark reaches:

in the aphotic zone, creatures must conjure
their own light.

Carve orifice out of fruit. Yes! I’ve no idea whether I’ve intersected with the several ways to hide which the poem reifies, but my privilege, indeed function, as reader is to own what the text makes me, not its author, see.

(c) 2024 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved