Audiometry
By Rachel Becker
The doctor says the hearing loss is bilateral, mild to moderate, premature given my age. During the test, a robotic voice intones You can say firetruck, so I say firetruck and you can say nosebleed, and I say nosebleed. Why is every crisis compounded? And what if I can’t say? Sometimes, I hear death instead of best. Moon instead of noon. The air chooses which sounds to swallow into its vanishing mouth, which ones to leave fallow.
Rachel Becker’s poetry recently appears or is forthcoming in journals including North American Review, Post Road, MER, SoFloPoJo, Rust & Moth, Wild Roof, Crab Orchard Review, and RHINO. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is a poetry editor for Porcupine Literary: a journal for and by teachers. She lives in Boston.
Going to AWP? We’d love to see you at our reading “Offsite. On Purpose”—with MER, NELLE, Perugia Press, Whale Road Review, and Cultivating Voice LIVE Poetry—held in honor of poet Jennifer Martelli’s memory. It takes place on Wednesday, March 4, at 7:00 pm (doors open at 6:30) at Westminster Hall, 519 W. Fayette St. We are also holding a meet-and-greet breakfast with Radar on Friday, March 6, at 8:00 am, at Bistro 300, Hyatt Regency, Baltimore Inner Harbor (free to attend, each poet pays for their own).
03/19 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Sunni Brown Wilkinson & local poet Elizabeth Jacobson / The BBar 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
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another stellar poem that speaks to me loud and clear (which is not what happened the last time I had a hearing test, either.) thank you, Rachel Becker, for nailing the experience of this kind of loss -- and thank you, SWWIM, for putting this poem in front of me.