Kelle Groom

Fever

Uncle Waldo’s appeared in Daytona Beach on the side of the freeway
a wormhole opened from Winter Park forty years ago—
I could walk inside on sawdust, find you singing.
Inside Beatus of Liébana’s Commentary on the Apocalypse

is an 11th c. illumination of The Flood by Stephanus Garsia already
so long gone everyone’s eyes are pure white, horse and donkey upside
down, waters red, hickory, algae green, and the world
bright yellow above the drowned, one blue bright bird.

I could be a night watchman for the quiet except
for all the standing and being eternally alert.
From above, a fever of sting rays appear in the sea like thousands
of LSD tabs floating in turquoise.

The paper gown ripped across my back, came apart while the doctor
spoke, and I held tissue scraps like flowers over my breasts.

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Kelle Groom is the author of four poetry collections, most recently, Spill (Anhinga Press), a memoir: I Wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl (NYT Book Review Editor's Choice) and How to Live: A Memoir-in-Essays (Tupelo Press, Oct 2023). An NEA Fellow, Groom’s work appears in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, The New Yorker and Ploughshares.