A Poem by... Me!

Thanks again to all who visit this space. If you like what you see below—which is a new type of post today—please recommend to others and subscribe. Bonus: the subscriptions are free! So…

Beyond the usual “essaying” and other stuff I do, I think it is time I started posting some of my own poetry in this space, as I find myself falling back into poetry in ways that are both challenging and wonderful.

I’m inspired to do this by Jason McBride, who runs a really cool Substack you should check out. It’s called Weirdo Poetry, and Jason illustrates his poems! (I do not because, well, drawing.)

Anyway, here’s an old poem I haven’t thought of in a while, so here we go. This poem appears in my book Tongue and Groove.

Blood-Letting
     by Chuck Rybak 

In 1957, man shipped frozen blood
for the first time. Locked in crystals
the living freight longed
for fingertips, the ins and outs of the limbs,
the whispered secrets through another's skin
as bodies brush during our daily course.
What loneliness resided there? In dull red bursts
separated from the body, subdivided from their own
rush and warmth? This was urgent blood,
delivered to desperation: a wound on a table,
an ambulance slaloming on shattered roads,
a locker kept cold for tomorrow.

When I lie in the bathtub, 
head thrown back, ears below the water,
I eavesdrop on my bloodstream,
the interval behind my ears, the liquid gear
and push. In this water long cold
I wonder when my blood will freeze,
a confusion of Fahrenheit and Celsius.
This blood has family, miles and states away.
Our talk, a flat stone, skims its surface
with enough bounce to fly
the boundary between ice and thaw,
the vein and brawl, the family tree--
blood thrives in dark places. 

Midjourney being Midjourney