Abstraction (1917)

after Georgia O’Keeffe

they gave me the mountain when i was still quite small. i came out already looking for it, with its name under my tongue so they didn’t have much of a choice. when i say they gave me the mountain i simply mean they put it straight into my heart. or rather, they gave me to the mountain. its heart a smoke chamber, violet and pearlescent. the throat of a lily. when i left its shadow, my body went wrong. the brain misworking. the doctors seeing growths which weren’t there. my knees cracking as if eggs, or small volcanoes fissuring with steam, into countless pieces. my eyes unadjusted to sunlight on snow, flickering red. my intestines filling and filling until i have been given to pain. i am only made of green and some days yellow—when i feel fine i think my eyes must look more blue. they gave me the name nostalgia when i was still quite small. this is not something you can outrun. a body needs to eat.

Clair Dunlap grew up just outside Seattle, Washington, and is the author of In the Plum Dark Belly (2016). Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Oakland Review, The Swamp Literary Magazine, Hobart, Love Me Love My Belly (Porkbelly Press), Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and more. She currently lives in the Midwest.