Swimming Pool Amnesia, by Sarah Parmet

when i fell six feet out
of the air, i landed in the hotel swimming pool.

it erased my memories, charcoal smoke
painting over a dry canvas of bone,

films clinging to my eyes — crystalline

cataracts, my amnesia stroking
the deep end with crooked fingers,

fingers and toes wrinkling like dry
prunes from plastic boxes

in summertime, longing to rip through
the cobweb barrier between

water and fluorescent light,

fiberglass warping the voices,
just another old record player singing

broken
melodies or faded cadenzas,

an ode to nine candle lives
extinguished in chlorine.

i know what you said about me
above water.