Hannah Schoettmer

I can't write a love poem to the foothills

after Rocky Mountain spotted fever 

in Oklahoma because they tried to take
my mother. They roll around and swallow
you whole is what the fireman told me. There’re fingers
in this river. Things too small to catch
in the drag net, too important not to find. 

I go home to the hospital where my mother bleeds
into an IV. The blood tests are ancient but here
they’re the only thing that tells the truth.
It’s an easy fix, they say. The side effects
are minimal. She’s lucky we found the tick head
before her feet started to rot. 

The fireman told me to take a kayak
down the river. Alone.
So I push out into the peace
before dawn. There’s a heron. There’s
a hatchet. If you know him, tell him
I know now what he means.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Hannah Schoettmer's writing has appeared in The Louisville Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, SOFTBLOW and elsewhere. She's received a fellowship from Brooklyn Poets. She lives in Los Angeles.