Poem of the Week | April 28, 2025

“The Letting” by Katherine Indermaur is our Poem of the Week.

Katherine Indermaur is the author of I|I (Seneca Review Books), winner of the 2022 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize, and two chapbooks. She is an editor of Sugar House Review and the recipient of prizes from Black Warrior Review, the Academy of American Poets, and Colorado Humanities. Her writing has appeared in Ecotone, Electric Literature, Ninth Letter, the Normal School, and elsewhere. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.
 

The Letting

blessed be the
inexplicable ligaments
            the ligature of blood
ladder of water up
along the body’s
sanguinary length
            the lie binding
us to the categorical
elongating its tendrils
            of explication
around each
            eager link

*

no cell goes still in me
little circuits open
            click shut
doctors speak statistically
& insistent i
            encircle
my womb like a bruise
            bubbled pebble
            martyred marble
ovular membrane
inelegantly sparking
            kicked shut

*

all those nights of winter
i found i couldn’t swallow
            such dark
empirical architecture
then summer
            unsealed
herself
sudden as vermillion
            thickening
            ) awake

*

each ache means
whatever shape
i will it to
            take
tactile mechanics
conceptual loss
            accrues in me
the doctor talks charts
            for now i
trend toward living
i chant to fill the body
            nearly crystal
            i wake
new splinters risen
) up from my skin
            to read

*

sonographer reads me
            electrical
            ) polar
            atrial detection
trilaminar disc sheaths its
            walls
cardiac lineages
            percuss
praise song of the cellular
            choral chamber
i carry yr 3d sheet music
i lug yr yolk-round drum
sound gives rise to space
            ) surround

*

each atrial arch rises
            ascends anew
along my metered
machinated static
amniosis slows to amber
            affixes all animal attention
against anywhere
            else ) no
agony will ever achieve
            encircle me as gravity
O allow us again the pleasure
allot us again the measure
            ) peel back the migraine
all that’s matrilineal reveals
the strata of arrival

*

a lantern i lower into the depths of
            ) me
as clean as thirst down the well
            light shines across
            ) into
the illuminated surface
rustling unempty center
            little known
            little mystery
requiring ) unceasing
            focus
hand over hand i unearth
            what whets me
find myself briefly
            holding
the letting
of full light

*

i press the honeywarm hive
            i love best
our recombinant dna
persistent flickering of
            ) oblivion
the infinite unfinished
            valves aggregate
palpate the heart
from palpare to touch gently
yr blood is first to
            touch me
            everywhere
i thought ) untouched

*

the lab calls to
give tireless
instructions
at one end of which i owe
            the incalculable
            future
i make myself
            ) our knitted selves
            illegible
soften into soft corners of
furniture
unedge myself
            fullness necessitates
i carry little else
barely thinking
this thinking laid
            bare

*

breath lessens
shallow ) once
            lost on
a circular island i walked to
its edge
pursued one of
            two directions
made it
back to the boat this way
            breath curls
circulates like cold
cream amid the heat of
each lung
this new warming shape takes of
            water in me
to make something for
living
            ) already lost
i cast us off
into the lifelong
walkable sea
            ) ) ) )

Author’s Note

I wrote this poem over the course of my first trimester while pregnant with my second child. Early pregnancy holds so many contradictions: life-altering change without the confirmation of visible physical changes, ecstasy and suffering, the sacred and the mundane, mystery and scientific fact. The line “the illuminated surface” comes from the Discalced Carmelite nun Edith Stein, per Fanny Howe’s essay “Immanence” (The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life). This poem is for Sasha Steensen.