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ectothermic memories 


by Stephanie Heit

finger & toe webs itch, gill slits 
     behind my ears threaten open 
              lungs’ deep lobes wrestle to expand with 
                    water homesick lidded eyes 
                              slip & slide skin slime 
                                                heliotropic flipper thermoregulation 

                                                       buoyant backfloat nap drift 
                                                             swamp milkweed, delicacy of 
                                                                     fern eyelashes & tiny fists 
                                                                            red eared slider, tongues & talons 
                                                                               riverkeeper companions 

                                                            perched deep 
                                                herring school silver moves 
                                                     to get middle middle 
                                                                 middle 

     pods of blowholes, gray whale 
backs, half flukes glide 
    knockknock sonar 
     deep mammal realm 

                                                                   different joys than landlubber 
                                                                             sputterslap celebrations 
                                                               blood oxygenates, flows towards 
                                                                                        away heart pump 
                                                                                  elastic & dry crumble 

                  I want moist edges 
          return to the porous shoreline 
    where I learned how to walk 
after I swam 

About Stephanie Heit

Stephanie Heit is a queer/disabled poet, dancer, and teacher of somatic writing and contemplative movement practices. She is a Zoeglossia Fellow, bipolar, and a member of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. Stephanie’s hybrid memoir poem, Psych Murders (Wayne State University Press 2022), witnesses and survives her experiences with shock treatment, psych wards, and suicidal ideation personified as a noir character murderer. Her poetry collection, The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System 2017), explores the seams of language, movement, and mental health difference. Her work has appeared in journals such as Sonora Review, Rogue Agent, About Place, Ecotone, Anomaly, Bombay Gin, Dunes Review, Typo, and Disability Studies Quarterly. She lives on Anishinaabe territory in Ypsilanti, Michigan where she codirects Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space, with her wife and collaborator, Petra Kuppers. https://stephanieheitpoetry.wordpress.com/

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