origin story

Chaelee Dalton

on this boat, each story its own universe—
decomposition below the clean, and refuse,
the dirty on the deck, themselves refusing
to kneel in front of order. How they celebrate:
stink and rain, rat and raven rising into the air,
out of the water, into the beginning of another life,
another race. This time, the rat wins by playing dirty:
drowns the cat, swindles the ox. Disease carrier.

Last time: snakes, civets, cats. This time: bats.
This time, everyone wears masks made of bee
venom and snail slime, pats their faces and their
own backs. This time, I want to catch the bad
in this breath. I want to swallow a bat
the way the old woman digests a fly,
to be the beast and its belly. To be dog
eater and vegan. To stay healthy,

I rub my body with sesame oil, drink raw
garlic and ginger mixed with Emergen-C.
My girlfriend takes Chinese herbal medicine.
My mom tries out acupuncture, needles sloping
gracefully, like the arched coat of a sleeping
porcupine. The cat knocks over another orange
bottle of my countless prescriptions. In this circle
of light around a star, to be an animal. Infected.

In this ark, this arc, these floors and their floating
foundation, in this deluge, in this quarantine
of cover. Of cautionary tale. Of the will of gods
and emperors, empires and their states, of the dirty,
above and below. In the ark’s lowest deck, in the river’s
darkest bed- there is where death and life cycle, curdle
milk, multiply, birth daughters and their disease, bear
stars, here, both universe and its underbelly.

Chaelee Dalton is a poet and physicist who was born in South Korea and now lives in Brooklyn. They have been published in several journals, including Impossible Archetype, ILDA South Korean Feminist Journal, and Careless Magazine. Their first chapbook, Mother Tongue, was chosen by Diana Khoi Nguyen as the winner of the Gold Line Press Poetry Chapbook Contest, and is forthcoming in Fall 2020.