Surge

Michelle Whittaker's "Surge" is a rumination on home, body, memory, wind, what it is to be hunted and haunted. In After Emergency, Whittaker writes, "three degrees of elbowroom, as/sighing seems to quiet the lighting/for slits that break down the dermal." Body becomes another entity, another shape, an instrument of space. "Surge" is a pilgrimage rearranging views--what is seen, what is remembered, what can no longer be reached. In A Partial Cento of Visual Light, Whittaker writes, "I could have done a Joan of Arc/as the last breath lodged in a man's throat." This may be the moment you start gasping. Begin storing up your oxygen; Whittaker's poems will leave you breathless.