An Abbreviated Glosa with Lines from Bishop’s Waiting Room by Kimiko Hahn

An Abbreviated Glosa with Lines from Bishop’s Waiting Room

… What took me
completely by surprise
was that it was me:
my voice, in my mouth.
Not mother or choral teacher.
Maybe my younger sister
though she was only three
in a crib in the corner
near the wall father jerryrigged
like the washing machine
that would gag and screech.
What took me
finally (into my seventies)
beyond that sharp gasp
and maybe animal cries
(a squeak or mewl)
was remembering my throat
as if attached to my eyes. Eyes
completely by surprise
as if make-do–like
the hose out the bathroom window
so the pipes wouldn’t freeze
(we bathed in a bucket).
Then like a rabbit bit by a cat
my lungs and tongue agreed
… that it was me:

though I cannot recall
if the stair hissed
or the sofa growled
or the blender brayed.
I now know that the noise
was an alarm, a bowwow–
my voice, in my mouth.

*

Kimiko Hahn’s latest collection is The Ghost Forest: New and Selected Poems. She is the 2023 recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement and teaches in the MFA Program for Creative Writing & Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York.