Chelsea Dingman
Nachträglichkeit
Between survival and surrender, what is rearticulated in the shadow
archive? If memory is present
not once, but several times over. As it rained, it might’ve been
summer. To enter the forest across the street
from our house, I might’ve agreed. Only in writing
about my father years after he lay down
by a roadside, do I re-transcribe
the encounter. With time, or death. My own
loneliness. I was only nine. The older boy who took me to the woods
moved soon after. My father went away for work
that winter & did not return. Yet, I return to memory
unarmed. The red cedars loom. They allow me to remain
unseen when the boy takes off my clothes. I remember sky.
I remember looking up. I remember not wanting
to look at myself, unsure why. I remember running home
through the dusk until home was a memory of trees
and dusk, the betrayal of the body
that would later become a disturbance
like love. If time too can be lost,
the shape of the world I was. Beneath the shimmering leaves
strewn across my bare belly and back. I’ve learned nobody
exists, day or night, except in the present. That I might
betray what I know, even in memory—
in a year of damp forests, of tenderness
like youth. The dusk, an endless loop
where rain begins & begins. From ruin.
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Chelsea Dingman’s first book, Thaw, won the National Poetry Series (UGA Press, 2017). Her second book, through a small ghost, won The Georgia Poetry Prize (UGA Press, 2020). Her third collection, I, Divided, is forthcoming from LSU Press in the fall of 2023. She is also the author of the chapbook, What Bodies Have I Moved (Madhouse Press, 2018). She is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Alberta. Visit her website: chelseadingman.com.