Treading Water
My coach told me I'd be a butterfly
-er if only I added grace
to my freestyle. I don’t remember learning
to swim, but I won’t forget
the second nature of dolphin-diving
off the coast of Maine, my body
knowing, without knowing, the exact
flick of the hips to propel me over
and under. Improbably, I believe
that my limbs will continue to lurch me
forward through the ocean swell if only
I ask it of them. That my lungs—
two pulsing pockets of luck
in an uncertain world—will hold
the air long enough for me to immerse
myself in the foreign landscape. One pair
of organs in a body full of potential
mutinies, and still, I am trying
to trust this life.
First Poem for Haakon
Your father vaults you into sky, his outstretched
arms always ready to catch you, your lilting giggle
a birdsong I hearken. I am lucky I get to hold you
close as your mother sips a beer and rests,
your father now shucking fresh oysters.
Let me love you like my own. Let me love
you the way I love the water, certain
that it will always return, even after the moon
draws it away from me. There are fish
with fins that spread like wings, translucent
fine-spined almost-limbs to propel them through
the wet air of their world. Let me show you how
to swim, how to carry your body weightless
through the sea, a new form of flying
for when you’ve grown too heavy
to launch from your father’s arms.
Home State
How high the tide rises, mid-
August, over the shores of Castine.
I am mountain-bound in Vermont,
but I recall the water breaching
the boards of the dock, see it swallowing
the beach sand where my husband bonfired
scraps and sticks, years ago
after a long day of mowing the lawns on Nautilus
Island. We were visitors then,
on that piece of earth claimed
by another, a wealthy man
whose estate we served.
We are visitors now, squatting
on this greater rock that spins
at an incomprehensible speed
through space, balanced exactly—
we cannot feel it tilt. We are always moving
even when we think ourselves still. Even
when we freeze, certain that the doe
across the field will not sense us
in our stillness, will not see
that she is joined in her grazing, all of us guests
on an island afloat in an infinity
most easily consumed blade
by finite blade of grass.
On the Fifth Anniversary of My Last Suicide Attempt
Now I want
more food &
more
love & more
time. Abstractions
each but
tangible: hold
an hour in
your mouth
as you slow
your tongue
mapping out
a lover’s
skin. Taste
the fact
of a minute
salt
accumulating
until you’ve
a whole
ocean-bite
of want.
Once I
understood
this sea
would not
drown me all
I could do
was paddle
forth
lapping as
the cresting
waves revealed
oyster &
tuna & lobster
delicacies
each alive &
un-netted.
Kate Bucca (she/they) is a queer mad/neurodivergent writer, artist, and educator who holds a PhD in Educational Studies from University of Prince Edward Island and a dual-genre MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Their work has appeared in The Masters Review Anthology VIII, Chestnut Review, Black Heart Magazine, On the Seawall, The Nervous Breakdown, Pithead Chapel, The Pinch, and elsewhere. Fomite Press released her short novel, Companion Plants, in 2014. More of their work can be found at katebucca.com.
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