Write a poem about drowning based on the last line of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (fabulous poem, by the way):

“We have lingered in the chambers of the dea

By the sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.”

Such an optimistic subject. Makes me want to continue to post my mostly horrible in class writing for you all to read. Not that there are many of you…

Chlorine

My head is a plastic ball

netted in wet straw

held beneath the water,

displacing molecules.

Not breathing,

just waiting,

pressed hard

by a strong, skinny hand.

Seconds turn into minutes.

Left eye goes black.

I can hear him shouting.

A loud crack permeates,

lightning parting the docile

sea, bound by concrete.

Lifting.

Lifting.

Screaming.

There is pain

that should be mine.

Pain is what

I should be feeling,

but no, I am dreaming,

half alive,

in a cold lipped, blue womb

that smells like chlorine.

The air inflates these lungs,

like fresh butterfly wings, like a

baby being born.

And the screaming…

I open my eyes and there are

little tornadoes of red

in the water where I used to be.