All Their Awful Particles by Wendy Chen

All Their Awful Particles

by Wendy Chen

I am calling up the dead—the dead of my family.

I pull them out of the earth by their hair, by the fistful.

I scrutinize their bodies, green as acid, for traces of mine.

How can I stop looking at them?

At their faces?

Their bones strung together

are the beads of a necklace

I wind around my neck.

Their lives pour into me through a silver faucet

I cannot turn off. Their deaths, too—

suicide, suicide:

the familial sickness.

Surely it has congealed within me,

all their awful particles.

Surely I have been marked.

If I were the firstborn, mystical or clean

like a sheet of cotton twisting in the wind—

No.

I am a piece of slate stained,

scarred with footprints of the dead.

Are they confessing what they’ve done

to make me?

They lay their hands on me

like strips of seaweed.

When I place my mouth at my feet,

unable to speak,

I feel their malformed sadness run through my hair like a comb.

This poem was published online in Aquifer on May 30, 2017. Aquifer is the online component of The Florida Review. The poet, Wendu Chen, has published one book of poetry, Unearthings, and one novel, Their Divine Fires. She teaches at UNLV.

As with every poem I post here, I think there is much to love and admire about this poem. The title attracted me immediately, and then the first line had me hooked. The second line is a memorable description. Line three guides us to the point of the poem: the speaker has questions for her ancestors and family members who have died.

After that, questions (you know I love questions), more incredible descriptions, a simile in the fourth stanza, and then the gut punch--suicide runs in the speaker's family. The next four stanzas feature the speaker 's anxiety--she feels this is her destiny.

Another stanza made up of a question.

The last two stanzas also have similes, one of my favorite literary techniques. I think most poets favor straight metaphor (my heart is a dog) rather than simile (my heart is like a dog), and while similar, they create different effects. To my mind, a simile forces the reader into a more active role, as they ask, "how? why?" and want an explanation. If it is not in the poem, which is probable, then the reader's imagination fills in the description. This puts the reader into a very active reader role.

In the penultimate stanza, Chen returns to the dead the speaker has dug up--they, too, are active, laying hands on the speaker. And in the final stanza, the speaker has been made mute, and the "malformed sadness" of the dead envelopes her head. I love malformed sadness! It is unusual and adds power to that last line.

On Sunday, I posted a poem in which the form added to the poem's subject and the reader's experience. I think that is true here as well. The inconsistent line lengths and stanzas

are jumpy, mimicking the speaker in her panic.

Suicide is a topic found in many poems in a variety of ways. This take--a speaker wondering if she has inherited the stain of suicide from past generations--is an interesting one.

Due to the depressing nature of suicide and the angst of this poem's speaker, I thought I would share some fun facts about seaweed:

it is an algae, not a plant

otters grab onto seaweed to keep themselves from floating away from where they wish to stay

seaweed comes in many colors

not only is seaweed extraordinarily healthy--chockfull of minerals--it is great for the planet's water and air--it consumes various toxins in the water and produces most of Earth's oxygen

You cannot enjoy seaweed if you are not here. 988 is the national number for the National Suicide Hotline, which is staffed every minute of every day. Most states have hotlines, as do many colleges, universities, counties, nonprofit organizations, and medical groups. If you are experiencing suicidal ideation or are feeling incapacitated by sadness and/or apathy, please call one of these numbers or speak to a health professional.