Ode to What Tethers Me

By MEGHAN MCCLURE

And though nobody knew what I would cost,
they kept me—a debt to be paid for centuries.

I owe you—You tiny glass vials glinting
like tiny messages in bottles, capped in plastic,

ready to be pitched into the sea—
Silver spiked syringes! Odorous alcohol swabs!

Oh, you IV bags and your tangle of lines and
the gloves the nurse wears to coax you into my vein!

Catheters! Bottles of saline! And gel!
Orange pill bottles! Childproof lids!

Surgical trays! Oxygen masks! Even you, the bag
they give me to hold my belongings!

Oh, hospital socks nubbed with plastic dots,
tucked into plastic sleeves, just so I stay put!

The pink-kidney shaped bowls where I’ve puked
float now somewhere in the Pacific

where I swim with my daughters in the
brilliant August sun, teaching them to float on

their backs, bellies pushed to the sky,
arms stretched wide—open to the sky.

My own body, when buried, will leach
into the soil, run to the sea, poisoning it all

long, long after I can be grateful for this cup of coffee,
my love’s sighs, my children’s laughter.

How many generations will live with my plastic
echoes scattered in the sand they run between their toes?

How many fish live with my plastic
in their guts? How many ducks have I choked?

How many more would I kill
to stay here—tethered and guilty and alive?

 

 

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

Meghan McClure is the author of the chapbook Portrait of a Body in Wreckages and co-author of A Single Throat Opens. Her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review, Tupelo Quarterly, American Literary Review, Pithead Chapel, American Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She lives in California.

From the beginning, The Common has brought you transportive writing and exciting new voices. We are committed to supporting writers and maintaining free, unrestricted access to our website, but we can’t do it without you. Become an integral part of our global community of readers and writers by donating today. No amount is too small. Thank you!

Ode to What Tethers Me

Related Posts

cover of the slip

Podcast: Lucas Schaefer on ”Tuesday“

LUCAS SCHAEFER
Lucas Schaefer speaks to managing editor Emily Everett about his story “Tuesday,” which appears in The Common’s brand new spring issue. “Tuesday” is an excerpt from his novel The Slip, out June 3 from Simon & Schuster; both center on a motley cast of characters at a boxing gym in Austin, Texas.

cover of the swan book

What We’re Reading: May 2025

TERESE SVOBODA
Curse and spell, Wright weaves ancient aboriginal beliefs, swooping and dipping like the swans, with fairytales and ominous “real life,” using time warps and fiercely beautiful language to register the vast environmental and social disaster that we as a people, among all others, are sure to endure.