I’m 42, I don’t need permission to seek
pleasure for myself, in darkness, driving
this rural road alone, the din of responsibility
growing quieter, and trust me, I will abide
no harm, I will care for each coming curve,
each passing car, I will not ask forgiveness,
not since my fertile room became afflicted,
this surgery, that surgery, am I to lose this
womb and with it some far-off sacredness?
The truth is: pleasure comes with a little
pain now. Pleasure is somewhere in the sky
where I don’t belong. And, getting closer,
my seatbelt becomes a kind of restraint.
I don’t have time. Some pleasures should find
me now, isn’t it possible I could deserve that?
And when I tremble—when I effervesce—
the only thing holding me back is the driving,
how little I can move and still be moved.
Click here to read Hannah Larrabee's compositional note.
Image: Woman Sitting in an Old Pick-Up Truck in Winter by Josh Hild, licensed under CC 2.0.
Hannah Larrabee:
This poem is a bit of an outlier for me—it asked that I stand still and acknowledge the pain I’ve been experiencing that will require a hysterectomy. That pain has also had a profound effect on intimacy and pleasure in my life. The poem directly articulates the experience of trying to reclaim some of that pleasure (and the feeling of being worthy of it), while also tapping into a sense of loss I’ve found surprising. In terms of process, “While Driving” arrived quickly though the ending gave me some trouble as I wasn’t quite sure how to describe an orgasm in a way that didn’t feel… cheap, overdone, etc. Not sure I succeeded there, but the idea of moving very little while being moved all while moving (in a car) is mostly what I wanted to come across.
Hannah Larrabee's Wonder Tissue won the Airlie Press Poetry Prize. Her new chapbook, The Observable Universe, is out from Lily Press and has been long-listed for a Massachusetts Book Award. Hannah's had work in Wild Roof, Flypaper Lit, River Heron Review, Gertrude Press, Maine Review, Molecule, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and elsewhere. She wrote poetry for the NASA James Webb Space Telescope program and read her work at Goddard Space Center, and she participated in an Arctic Circle Residency with artists and scientists in October 2022. Hannah received an MFA from the University of New Hampshire and she is currently an editor at Nixes Mate Review. More at hannahlarrabee.com
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