DAY 16, FEMINISM AND FITNESS - CALDERA POETRY COLLECTIVE

First Signs of Hunger

Caldera Poetry Collective

Try not to imagine it     a shark in the deep

                                         of chlorine aftersmocks     little nubbly toe-nips

a flirtation     a terror    I slip     furrow my way

rather a lake     rather anything

                             to put my suited body underneath    cloven

I find myself becoming the spoon     self-propelled machine

                       when I wanted a wave    

I host a mass for mouths     cherish these unconscious activities    

                                                                               vital     dire

each breath     apart from huffing     awaits my stroke

                            with arm      with out   beating back   meniscus lip

sudden as the heart     sudden as the body says no longer    

         apniatic : balletic         

eyelet of water     let me be     who you are     let me douse       

                                           the rubble in my olympic     wetness

nothing branches inward but red     radial pain     lumps

                under skin offer the same

my sweat slicked off     a shiver     the shark too     her teeth too          

                                            my neck stiffened with consequence

The Caldera Poetry Collective comprises Colleen Coyne, Meryl DePasquale, Opal McCarthy, and Molly Sutton Kiefer. Individually, their poems have appeared in numerous journals, including alice blue review, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Drunken Boat, Handsome Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, La Petite Zine, Tarpaulin Sky Literary Journal, The Collagist, The Pinch, Southampton Review, and Women's Studies Quarterly. Members of the group have published lyric essay and poetry collections with Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press, dancing girl press, eohippus labs press, and Ricochet Editions. The Caldera Poetry Collective has been writing collaboratively since 2010; more at calderapoetry.com.