Against Water

By Julia Kolchinsky

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You refuse to let 
            the lazy river take you, fight 
                        its current, holding tight 
            to railings, walls, my outstretched arm, anything
to keep from following the flow. 
                    
                        Salmon and steelhead swim 
            upstream so their young survive 
long enough to hatch, to fight 
            for survival themselves. 
                        You have been fighting 
            since birth. Against any water. 
Doctors give us acronyms 
            to name your urges. Pills 
        		to curb them. To help 
            fit in they say. 

Salmon and steelhead
            are the only fish to swim 
                        against the current, yet 
            we call them fish, loyal 
to labels outside our species. 
            You dunk another boy underwater 
                        in a game he called murderer, and you
            are named weird, strange, disturbed, 
human, yes, but not quite. 

            Perhaps because an animal 
                        who stands out will get 
            eaten and soon go extinct.
Unless, that is, it turns
            its difference into strength.
                        One-fifth of all known fish 
            populations are declining, 
the salmon and steelhead
            mate and reproduce against
                        the river’s rush. They flood 
            their scales and roe, iridescent,
the opposite direction 
            of freshwater. 

                        They are surviving. 

            You get knocked under 
by the rush, emerge laughing, coughing, chlorine 
            thick on your hair, knee
                        scraped from the pool’s 
            hard bottom, red flesh 
exposed like a gutted 
            sockeye, eager 
                        to return to water.

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Julia Kolchinsky (formerly Dasbach) is the author of three published poetry collections: The Many Names for Mother, Don't Touch the Bones, and 40 WEEKS (YesYes Books, 2023). She has two forthcoming books, PARALLAX (The University of Arkansas Press, 2025) finalist of the Miller Williams Prize selected by Patricia Smith, and When the World Stopped Touching (YesYes Books, 2027), a collaborative collection with Luisa Muradyan. Her recent awards include Hunger Mountain's Ruth Stone Poetry Prize and Michigan Quarterly Review's Prize in Nonfiction. Her writing has appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, and American Poetry Review. She is at work on a collection of linked lyric essays about parenting her neurodiverse child and the end of her marriage under the shadow of the war in Ukraine, Julia's birthplace. She is Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Denison University.

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• 12/12 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Nicole Cooley + local writer Caroline Cabrera / The Gallery at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free

• One workshop remains in our Workshop Series--SWWIM Lessons: From Prompt to Placement: “Surfing Submittable with Jen Karetnick – Keeping your head above water in the poetry submissions process” on 12/10 (register here). Price: $80/workshop. Time: 7:00–9:00 PM (EST). Where: Zoom.

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