two poems by molly akin
I had a scan
of something
lurking
in and around
my coiled masses
so neatly folded
and unfolded
/
I had a yearn
for something
certain
certainty slips
slothed parabola
I lay within
a new parable
closer to
uncertainty
/
I had a scan
of something
enveloped in
my laddered
window flapping
I stood watching
as my brain
shook off its order
and flew
after J.H.
Of Fatigue
Yesterday, I started to write of fatigue. It feels womanly. A legacy of womanly tiredness. A little
mirror at the museum. All the women in repose. Reclining women. Women draped in their laying
flesh. Heavy with rest.
*
Origin
mid 17th century (in the sense ‘task that causes weariness’):
from French fatigue (noun), fatiguer (verb),
from Latin fatigare ‘tire out’, from ad fatim, affatim ‘to satiety or surfeit’
*
A task that causes weariness.
A weariness without a task.
A satiety — just enough.
A surfeit — too much.
A filling with fatigue.
A surfeit that weighs on my breast.
A satiety that drags to bed.
My daughter’s complaint, “but you are always tired!”
In response to my “not tonight baby, I’m tired.”
Her memory is unable to trace back to a livelier time.
*
Origin
Old English līflic ‘living, animate’ (see life, -ly).
*
The mother who is not weary in bed by eight. A faded scrap of fabric. The fabric of my tiredness.
A rag and a bone. A living animation of my tired fabric.
*
This fatigue stretches back to her origin. My youngest daughter has no memory to call to.
She was born and I was tired. A little mirror.
Condensing into something easy to remember — an overwhelming and persistent tiredness.
Molly Akin’s chapbook, Hospice, won the 2024 FLP New Women's Voices in Poetry prize. She has read in venues including the Emily Dickinson Museum, Massachusetts Poetry Festival and Lit Youngstown. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Brevity, HAD, The Denver Quarterly, Identity Theory, Inflectionist Review, Maudlin House, Moon City Review and Paraselene. Molly and her family live on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she leads a historic library. mollyakin.com