Death Fluorescence by Julia Bouwsma

Death Fluorescence is as strange, intricate, and thought-provoking as its name. In her third poetry collection, Julia Bouwsma has combined scientific knowledge, rural farm life, family history, and the history of Jewish genocide in Europe into a rich showcase of our interconnected human existence. Several of the poems are titled “Study in Epigenetic Memory: . . .” and might form a pulse that provides context and repose throughout the book. These poems relate scientific studies concerning inherited trauma in mice, interwoven with personal, historical, or current events. This type of thinking is prevalent in the book as a whole as well—scientific knowledge, history, and the present all inform each other and help frame our understanding of the world and our place in it. This is a great and engaging book and Julia uses language and poetic form expertly to heighten the discoveries in these poems. Buy here.

From “A Mediation on Parasitic Infection”

The long-lashed almost-human orb

of the pig’s eye swivels into a white squeal

of panic, wheelbarrowing as I grab the shoat’s

hocks firm and don’t let go until the syringe

pierces flesh and all the Ivermectin empites

beneath the skin of his straining neck.

When a pig begins to cough, we know

there are worms in the lungs. Untreated

an infestation will cause pneumonia, hepatitis,

a general condition of wasting

known as ill thrift. But, of course, facts like this don’t

change anything. It’s my job to hold on. . .

From “I’m Okay, But the Country is Not” (a crown of sonnets)

I’m okay, but the country is not, says my grandmother

before she dies, before she closes her eyes

and sleeps the sleep from which one does not rise.

Breath curdles what’s left of the words in her,

the ocean her lungs will become. Drift downriver—

familiar current of language, swirling ink-stained skies,

but at the end, it’s calm. A blanket unfurls. She lies

still, a raft in an eddy, cocooned in cotton departure.

On the far edge of the bed, a scarred shoreline waits.

There’s a map of ruin inside each veined limb, trails

of bruises you can follow back. Once, a girl played

a finger piano in a white-collared dress, and spates

of curls exploded from her skull like scales

as she laughed at the music her own fingers made.

Follow the music her fingers made: this is how we slip

into memory. Laugh with her. This is how we fall.

I remember everything, she says, face to the wall,

it’s a problem. Her voice is frayed, a leaking ship.

The newspapers pile up unread; she doesn’t flip

a page. Afraid: the word she will not say, and yet we see

her see the people forgetting, unspooling a century,

how the fascia—invisible braid, coiling strip

that ties our tongues to our hearts—is tightening.

Never forget: pink membrane, shard of ash she taught

me to carry under it, sugar cube, our sweet defiance.

Now mouths hang open as we speak, even swallowing.

What Jew goes easy? She tosses, turns, is fitful, caught,

and not until the final day does she succumb to silence . . .