This late summer, we’re sitting with “Heat, Body, Horror” by Dina Abdulhadi from our upcoming Room 47.3 Bodies, now available for pre-order!
Heatwaves in spring,
deathfalls in autumn marathons.
I fry eggplant in its skin,
baked again with tomato, breaking down
to a bloody, slimy thing served cold with bread.
City policy: the only guaranteed air conditioning
is a morgue, the humming trailers
keeping bodies unslimed.
Move too much, you’ll
be blamed for your death.
Too much stimulation by day, too much
cortisol with morning. I dream of dark
hot night, a lover I never made love to.
The humid sun wakes me out of strangled fishnet
covering their chest. The light
more disruptive than the heat, that sweaty warmth
I crawl back to in place of another body.
What if wet n wild
started running ads on climate change?
Manufactured the sky’s chemical kaleidoscope
into an eye palette. Turned the ocean to
seltzer. Spewed black death to air. Permafrost bodies
don’t know the plagues they release upon melting.
Our bloods’ fever is barely over
the threshold where fungi thrive.
Desiccated land expands death dunes
men cross when they try to flee
the death camps built by men.
We’re relearning how to spell
the plural of crisis. Life means
losing everyone, or everyone losing you first.
The dead don’t lay in the street to be walked over.
May they haunt us, forever. May we honor
their haunting, letting there be space
for what is to come, to really come
for what is possible to last, to last
if bracing, and be enough.
Find more glittering pieces about chronic pain, disability, mental illness, through-lines of community, radical care, and self-affirmation in Room 47.3 Bodies.
