print previewback CAROLINA HOTCHANDANI
Archipelago
A clothesline suspended between two trees
seemed an apt metaphor for identity
back when the clothes nicked by a gale
stood for odd, forgotten moments,
memorable only when they blew away.
That was a few missing socks ago—
before the line let slip away
moments when the body was porous,
when I was warm skin and milk for another
when the wind snatched from my father’s mind
who he is and who we used to be.
That was before a virus turned us
into warm and gracious hosts.
The line curled around our sweet gum tree,
making the tree seem central to our lives
when it was not. I need a new
clothesline or sturdier imaginary
clothespins or a new metaphor—
one that holds our whole sievelike bodies
and the fictions we keep trying to contain.
I need an image for what we are
when the body abandons the ego.
An archipelago? See that lovely chain
of islands resembling the points
on a connect-the-dots activity for a child.
The eye can join the islands or see
scattered masses of land that a tiny hand
has not been drawn to—
has not picked up a crayon
to make a through-line through them.
Just let the little islands be. 
Archipelago
Somehow History