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/