Elinor Ann Walker

Tardigrade Song

after Arthur Sze

Thicker skin:    what you say you want—what if
a superpower to transform under pressure meant
being blasted experimentally into space?          I desiccate
while you scan the sky for bright
satellite            star link            space station
then you cup your hands to mountain cistern
quench thirst from rock while hiking trails
that ring a bluff late afternoon—         a miracle
I become                      like stone
un-plumped     hardened          inanimate
imagine deprivation                 like that
to turn tun I must shrink         slowly—
think:   dust     film      barest   matter
tickle in your throat
still, I remember           how to get
back
to tenderness
reconsider the allure
of being other
than you are
when bruises kiss skin
when salt pricks
your cheeks                 think:
68 percent of us will survive
ultraviolet radiation     return,
longing
             not for back-
bone
                but for trembling
drops of dew.

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Elinor Ann Walker is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks, Fugitive but Gorgeous, winner of the 2024 Sheila-Na-Gig First Chap Prize (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) and Give Sorrow (Whittle Micro-Press). Featured on Verse Daily and in several anthologies, her poetry appears or is forthcoming in many journals including AGNI, American Poetry Journal, Bayou Magazine, Nimrod International Journal, The Penn Review, Plume, Poet Lore, Quarterly West, The Southern Review and Terrain.org. She holds a PhD in English from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, lives in the Appalachian foothills and is on the poetry staff at River Heron Review. Find her online: https://elinorannwalker.com.