A Beginners Guide to Yoga | Genevieve N. Williams
Trauma stays tucked in ribcage and hip,
jolts you out of dreams you can almost see.
When you wake too quickly, the image slips
with the ancestral shadow in your pulse’s grip.
You repeat, Nothing happened, at least to me.
It’s your parents’ trauma staying tucked in ribcage and hip,
and then you’re bent and crying on the lip
of your yoga mat, and you don’t know why. The key
to all this, you think, is lost when the image slips
and you wake too quickly. Flip
off the sweaty blanket, make some tea.
Trauma stays tucked in ribcage and hip.
Stretch it out of you, let your sweat drip,
release whatever dams your sea.
You wake too quickly, and the image slips
but you are stronger than whatever trips
through your dreams. Breathe…
even as trauma stays tucked in ribcage and hip,
even if you wake too quickly, and the image slips.
About the Author:
Genevieve N. Williams holds an MFA from University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she received two Academy of American Poets Prizes. She is a queer poet whose poetry won an Edward Stanley Award from Prairie Schooner, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, The American Journal of Poetry, Mid-American Review, and Verse Daily, among other journals and anthologies.