Alana Baum: Half-Life
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
half-life
can i be nostalgic for a season i am still in? like autumn or pleasure or other phases where the love/loss continuum wears its veil extra thin? can i be nostalgic for a summer that never quite ripened as i summon its best bits and chew on their tented moments / suck the sap out / can i be nostalgic for last february when ignorance was bliss? even early march with its mouth full of new beginnings / accumulating breathless before the world stopped / sometimes i’m nostalgic for grief / just the part where the crack was still fresh and unbearably vivid and i all tied up in love/loss continuum / holding both ends in the same hand like a toonish twisted lasso / aiming for the moon / or already there
way out
i wander back into
my body today
or maybe i wade
maybe i wake late
day in a wave
present precisely
at the moment
the stingrays chestbump
close enough that we hearsee
the flap and squeal our
ungirlish way out
she squats to pee
unshamely and i
catch the tailend
or really the light just
catches her tiny water
as it travels mere inches
hits the tiny glass
we call sand and
when i make my own
wetwarm in the bigcool
i marvel at the way
that we find our way
back to our centers
all the way out
at the edges
Alana Baum (she/they) is a queer poet from Los Angeles, currently living in Philadelphia. She wrote her most accurate bio at age four: "Sometimes, when my friends want to play games with me, I want to be by myself and talk about what I am." Very little has changed. Alana's work has been published in Argot Magazine, Oatmeal Magazine, and No Assholes Literary Magazine and is forthcoming from SWWIM. Alana also writes poems for strangers via @softcorepoetics. They are in graduate school to become a sex therapist.
