{"id":10723,"date":"2020-07-23T10:09:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T05:09:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/the-fish-that-halved-water\/"},"modified":"2023-02-15T16:18:32","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T11:18:32","slug":"the-fish-that-halved-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/the-fish-that-halved-water\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The Fish that Halved Water&#8221; by Alycia Pirmohamed, from Arc&#8217;s 2020 Shortlist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-soundcloud wp-block-embed-soundcloud\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u201cThe Fish that Halved Water\u201d by Alycia Pirmohamed by Arc Poster\" width=\"580\" height=\"400\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?visual=true&#038;url=https%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F854055232&#038;show_artwork=true&#038;maxheight=870&#038;maxwidth=580&#038;secret_token=s-oZnFCiKnjlk\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Fish that Halved Water <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When dusk meets water meets the history of my eye, I walk<br>right into the shimmering body of a fish\u2014and wait<br>for the river\u2019s rinse and monsoon to become memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the landmark of ruins I have become: A woman<br>following every weave of coral reef in search of a true story.<br>It is already night and all I have learned is the past<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>is a version of this earth where few things have a name.<br>I glide my way through the anonymity of ghosts.<br>Listen, I expected the Atlantic to show me all that ruptured<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>when woman after woman after locust crossed an ocean.<br>There are too many ways to say canyon, but one day<br>I\u2019ll hold all those distances in my mouth\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>all the kilometers my longing has travelled.<br>In the middle of the night, I walk right into my dreams<br>and cluster with the other lost sisters of the moon,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>our bodies blushing out from the forest\u2019s velour.<br>In the middle of the night, I walk right into my dreams<br>and swim with the grass pickerel as they scissor through<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>my every plot of land. The thing about being halved<br>is that all the loose ends will sneak up on you, whether you\u2019re<br>slicing zambarau, or dragging a toboggan up a hill<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>threading in and out of the evergreens as you climb.<br>There are too many ways to say cleave, but one day I\u2019ll split<br>into myth and pass through the mouths of a hundred<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>generations, jaws hinged wide open for this story.<br>I am woman after woman after spooling woman, ensorcelled<br>by water that twins and fissures and halves into worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Manahil Bandukwala on \u201cThe Fish that Halved Water\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe Fish that Halved Water\u201d takes the reader through a dreamlike, interconnected world. Through, intertwined mythologies and journeys, the poem\u2019s narrator goes on a search through the ocean, through the forest, through moons and monsoons, ending on a linked thread of generations across generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Alycia Pirmohamed<\/strong> is the author of the chapbooks <em>FACES THAT FLED THE WIND<\/em> (BOAAT Press) and <em>HINGE<\/em> (ignitionpress). Her recent awards include the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, the CBC Poetry Prize, the Sawti Poetry Prize in English, the 92Y Discovery Poetry Contest, and the Ploughshares\u2019 Emerging Writer\u2019s Contest in Poetry. Alycia received her MFA from the University of Oregon. She is currently a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\">&#8220;The Fish that Halved Water&#8221; by Alycia Pirmohamed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10733,10548,10271,10489","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"genre":[150],"publisher":[],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3148,3265,3266],"topic":[3178],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10723"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10723"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10723"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10723"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10723"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10723"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10723"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}