The Salton Sea (poem by Sophia Stid) (photo of me by Amanda..
Added 2024-08-13 06:38:36 +0000 UTCThe Salton Sea (poem by Sophia Stid) (photo of me by Amanda Brooks at the Salton Sea) You’ll come across a beach of bones. Small, shaped like cups or petals. It takes nerve. Every step becomes a mouth. The sound, the shape of it. These bones are not articulate. The fish are drowning underwater. They die with their mouths open. They die with their whole bodies and leave them brittle on the shore. You’ll walk slow because you won’t know the word, which is rxxx, which you’re not allowed to feel. You’re aware of your body at its hinges: knees, hips, elbows. Collarbones. A hand spread there, the roots of the throat, the open space where the world gets in. Careful with your steps and breath in this place, beyond care—you won’t touch any more of the landscape than you have to. An upholstered armchair half-submerged in water breathes in and out with surrounding waves. What you think is a swan is a white pelican. This is California in winter, this is the end of the world. Once, someone you loved leaned his head back against you and said, okay. You shaved his head. The blue bathroom light swung a little—an earthquake, a train on the track— the falling hair, softer in the falling. You could hear it hit the floor. He said, you’re trembling. Don’t tremble. Everything sinking. An ocean of memory in America— a yacht club decades-drowned, the force-fed fish storing fat in their tails, farmland that can’t be farmed without making rain. A reservation outside beauty or law. Water so toxic it burns. The fish are cracking underfoot. Remember: his cancer had no cause. There are things you’re not allowed to feel.
