Sonnet for the Study of the World in the Body
after Aurora Levins Morales
Consider that the only path is deeper into the mountain, its parallel range my volcanic muscle.
I am a tectonic eruption of industry filtered down into flesh. industry’s feisty oracle. a viral
and chemical obliteration in bed. consider the reckless euphoria of avarice turned permanent
inflammation. what unexpected bedfellows in my bone: Napolean Bonaparte’s campaign into
Egypt, the mining of dolomite in the Rose Vein, and the livestock industry bringing steak to
plate. a cancerous romance. aren’t we felled tracts of quivering organs at their limit.
consider the body is an occupied geography of militarisms. treeless slopes and xenoestrogens.
planetary fevers, extinction on the brink. I seize in the steepest pitch, vomit out the darkest hour.
I am an abandoned lot of cells, swollen water, volatile organic compound. a petroleum capillary.
nonetheless, the doctor calls me a chemical hysteria. reduces me to quell his heartsink. swell
his purse. so, consider the cytoplasmic filament a map. my short-breath lung a compass looking
back, finding north an interminable horizon. consider the world in my body an afflicted kingdom
of historical intimacies. my method an insomniac research into the corporeal library. synapse
bound with scenes of subjugation to order. a wilderness of antigens, too. B cells, borrelia,
beloveds
in
riot.
I am a tectonic eruption of industry filtered down into flesh. industry’s feisty oracle. a viral
and chemical obliteration in bed. consider the reckless euphoria of avarice turned permanent
inflammation. what unexpected bedfellows in my bone: Napolean Bonaparte’s campaign into
Egypt, the mining of dolomite in the Rose Vein, and the livestock industry bringing steak to
plate. a cancerous romance. aren’t we felled tracts of quivering organs at their limit.
consider the body is an occupied geography of militarisms. treeless slopes and xenoestrogens.
planetary fevers, extinction on the brink. I seize in the steepest pitch, vomit out the darkest hour.
I am an abandoned lot of cells, swollen water, volatile organic compound. a petroleum capillary.
nonetheless, the doctor calls me a chemical hysteria. reduces me to quell his heartsink. swell
his purse. so, consider the cytoplasmic filament a map. my short-breath lung a compass looking
back, finding north an interminable horizon. consider the world in my body an afflicted kingdom
of historical intimacies. my method an insomniac research into the corporeal library. synapse
bound with scenes of subjugation to order. a wilderness of antigens, too. B cells, borrelia,
beloveds
in
riot.
May 2024
heidi andrea restrepo rhodes (they/them) is a queer, sick/disabled, brown/Colombian, writer, scholar, educator, and cultural worker. A 2023 recipient of the Creative Capital Award, they are author of The Inheritance of Haunting (University of Notre Dame Press, 2019). Their chapbook, Ephemeral (Ecotheo Collective, 2024) was the 2022 winner of the Lorca Latinx Poetry Prize. Their poetry and non-fiction have been published in American Poetry Review, the Normal School, Poetry Magazine, and other places. They currently live in California.
Art: Colleen McMillian by Kat Cervantes