A Siren
/Lauren Camp
After the earache started, it harrowed to hear people talk.
I could not live but ambiguous within the thick animal
of voice. For weeks, constant
snow and weary matter. Smoke and flat
gash from each remark. Shadow sounds.
The doctor checked drum and canal,
and in a soundproof room, volumes and pitches.
His answer to this gristle was
to have patience. All along, I thought I must hear
the world. He said I might sink deeper.
I did not want to listen.
Friends offered advice for the fluid:
pressure points at temples or tablet and pellet
and dropper then lie down in darkness.
I was battened with volatile squalls
that didn’t end those months.
I drifted in obstruction.
The ear wanted its cocoon. No apothecary
could solve it. I apologized to everyone.
These days, the panic of the world
is the size of each of our heads.
What if we’ve amplified our proof and it repeats
as a hum? Or what if what is said
doesn’t stick, or if the diagnosis is
you stay in your house with the sounds
of your house and the plan of the day, and I live
in mine with the street that runs past and the history
and future that make their impossible noise.
Author’s Note: My poems begin from something I'm holding—either because I want to keep it close, or just the opposite, I want to be able to be done with it, to push it away. This poem certainly started with the latter and became more interesting as it layered over time. This meant some radical shifting in revision, whittling down from the direct narrative and rant I had begun with, and adding a turn to further enrich the surprise connections it lets me make.
Lauren Camp is the author of five books, most recently Took House (Tupelo Press), winner of the American Fiction Award in Poetry. Other honors include the Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award and New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Poem-a-Day, Prairie Schooner and The Los Angeles Review, and has been translated into Mandarin, Turkish, Spanish, Serbian and Arabic. www.laurencamp.com
