writings on food, the creative process, on how to be in a relationship with myself. writings even on writing.

Carter Umhau 3/6/18 Carter Umhau 3/6/18

"i don't feel like a lion anymore" (the labor poem)

This poem was read aloud both at the Fremont Abbey Arts Center's "The Round" on February 13, 2018 and on "The Appetite" podcast, in a bonus episode set to release on March 7, 2018. It was written to be read aloud...so if you want to hear it read to you like it's storytime...check out the link below and hear me chat about the process.

listen to the recording

I watched my best friend labor in a bathtub last week.
I was called in between contractions and
I rushed there,
coming in from the worst January rain

with one bottle of water,
two string cheeses,
one sandwich and one bagel,
two juices,
and three pastries in tow
all in paper Starbucks bags packed to the edges
hoping that if I covered all the major food groups
even if I didn’t have the right thing to say
I would have something valuable to offer.

I’ve watched the women around me grow babies in their bellies
creating a space inside themselves that I don’t think I have
I’ve watched my best friends holding children in their arms that they made
while I, myself struggle with believing I can make anything of value to me at all.

But when I walked into the delivery room, I walked in teary eyed,
honored and humble and silent.
The delivery room,
was quieter than I expected.
The voice of my best friend
the only audible voice in the room
everyone else around her in a sacred hush

And I saw her
on knees and hands
the sway of her hips
stomach reaching to the ground
the whole room centered around her body:
her body like a force rooting down.

She spoke sparingly.

I wandered around the quiet room,
bottle of juice in my hand
a straw available for her lips.

Her breath started
picking up pace
teeth clenched
the
hooo
hoooo
hooooo
of my best friend.

Hours passed and her body swayed wider
as her baby boy came closer and closer down.
I saw her shoulders slump a little
and with her voice,
she said
“I don’t think I can do this.”
But then gathered our warm faces with her eyes
and through a seething breath went
hooo
hoooo
hooooo

From the back of the room,
I watched her knees slip a little on the floor of the bathtub
getting shaky.
Voices around her speaking up now:
“You’re as strong as a lion.”

She winced a little,
Body hunched
and used her voice and said,
“I don’t feel like a lion anymore.”
hooo
hoooo
hooooo
“I don’t feel like a lion anymore.”

But then
she felt her husband’s palm
on the small of her back
rising in and out of the water.
She then grasped her own mothers’ hands,
gathering all the lion back into her
and used her voice--
started talking to her own baby boy
through clenched teeth:

Baby boy,
we’re almost there.
Baby boy. I can’t wait to meet you.
Baby boy,
you’re doing so good.

Is this not what a voice is for?
To speak out loud your slumping shoulders
to let it be known?

"I don’t feel like a lion anymore."
Is this not what a voice is for?
To call it out
and then to call yourself up--
letting yourself fall apart just a little bit
so you can bring yourself back together again?

“Baby boy,
Baby boy.
I am here.”
She said with her voice.

I have watched my best friends grow babies in their bellies,
creating space that I don’t think I have.
So
my voice.
My voice.
What is it for?

I hear it booming through this room,
The echo of it between seats.
My voice--
I have no idea what it sounds like to you.

Is it supposed to sound sharp in cadence?
Voice of a slam poet:
provocative,
loud,
on beat?
Is my voice supposed to sound clear
or strong?
Because I too
don’t feel like a lion anymore.

I have watched the women around me birth babies and businesses
and I don’t know.
I don’t know.
hooo
hoooo
hooooo

I once was full of clarity,
persistence.
I don’t feel like a lion anymore.
I have heard so many stories
from other people’s mouths--
I, myself, trying their voices on as harmony
to my own.
I have heard so much
that my own voice
no longer booms in my own head.
It’s become over-crowded in here.

hooo
hoooo
hooooo

Isn’t that what a voice is for?

I hear my own voice in unison now:
“I don’t feel like a lion anymore.”
Saying it out loud
is good enough.
“I don’t feel like a lion anymore.”
Is this not what a voice is for?
To let deep sighs out, to be known?

hooo
hoooo
hooooo

“Baby boy, you’re almost here,”
my best friend says
with her voice.

I talk to myself:
“Baby girl,
you’re doing so good.

hooo
hoooo
hooooo

- Carter Umhau

Carter Umhau 2/23/18 Carter Umhau 2/23/18

being alone and finding it the most delicious thing in the world.

listen to the recording

Being alone
Biting into the tangy flesh of a peach
while standing on the side of the street.
Laughing in my own head
as my torso leans forward so the juice can drip where it may.

I love having no one else around to distract me
from rice krispies in milk,
during that two minute window
when temperature and texture are at their highest contrast:
cold, crackly, and worthy of my ravenous mouth.

I love a cold plunge into rushing waters,
my breath panting to catch up—
that deep relief.

Being alone.
Being alone and finding it the most delicious thing in the world.

Being alone and wrapping my thirsty arms around the container of my own body:
making my own space
for writing in the morning without worrying about a thing.
for lying around sideways, upside down, and covered in glue.
Making my own space
for a meticulous record of each inkling,
my own private poetry slam.
Beers in the bathtub,
and dancing on the sink.

I like my alone-ness.
I love, my alone-ness.
I could schedule out my days,
hour by hour
not enough hours in the day
to make
all the dates
I’d make with myself:

An hour for rising slowly and watching the light on the wall
An hour for coffee, and a crumpet.
Three hours to write.
Two hours to bathe.
Two more hours to write.
An hour to stretch
Two hours to dance
Stretch again. And run!
Lie on the floor alone.
Think some more alone.
Need to reach out to someone?
Write a letter alone.

I am so hungry for myself.
Ravenous for my own insides

But I gut myself out and give me away,
empty myself out like a horse for its rider.
I cannot keep life inside me if I offer it as a blanket to everyone else.
Yet I am such a hungry thing.

There’s a pit in my stomach
that says it’s not ok to find myself
so delicious.
But maybe for now,
I’ll stay smothered
yet covered
in the tangy flesh of peach
that I’ll let drip
and drip
and drip down my wrist
and between my fingers
covering my chin in streams of sweetness,
keeping me for myself.

- Carter Umhau

Carter Umhau 2/14/18 Carter Umhau 2/14/18

"You don't have to heal and change at the same time."

listen to the recording

I don’t have a poem
about roses or peonies.
How each tightly bound bud
unfurls
layer after layer after layer
blush pink or crimson
unending complexity—
a floral portrait of what I’d like to be.

I don’t have a poem
about the tree above my backdoor
fresh winter fruit
and orange blossoms along the floor
I don’t have a poem
about wringing out their sweet scent
from the bottom of my shoes—
a clear sense of home as I’d like it to be.

I don’t have a poem
about something beautiful or right
syntax, sandwiching specifics
or some meticulous metaphor molded between cappuccino sips
I don’t have a poem
that I wrote because I finally knew
where to start with my grief,
what went wrong, and how I’d like it to be.

Because I have work days,
that are long days
that wring me out and wear me thin
draining all my resilience for someone else’s kin.
I have no poem about the elegance
of laying resigned on my couch watching Freaks and Geeks,
Tate’s cookies and old Christmas nuts on repeat
how I keep forgetting numbness isn’t how my heart wants to live or be.

But I have love in my ear,
saying to me,
“You do not have to heal and change at the same time.”
Reminding me I can sink my teeth into not knowing a thing
I don’t have to heal
and change
at the same time.
I may change from doing all this healing
But healing does not come simply because of some bold change
I have time.

- Carter Umhau

Carter Umhau 2/12/18 Carter Umhau 2/12/18

I met myself last night on a page.

listen to the recording

I met myself last night on a page—
just nineteen years-old—
but I respected her
wild
experimental craft.

At that age, I had fewer resources
so I wrote the words down that I wouldn’t speak
and sculpted poems for survival instead.
I turned the walnut in my throat into some kind of
wag-a- bosh, wild worship.
I crooned cuckoo just to get it out, to let it be said.

Now, this
this
is the same heart.
The heart that waltzed slow on a roped rug,
wine-sloshed and spaghetti-full.
This is the same heart I’ve covered
and slaughtered
and sabotaged.
My ache is the same, and my heart still
flutters
flounders
figures it out.

I am alive and always wise,
always wrong.

There’s something hopeful here in the life I have—
in these faces,
in these ferns,
in the drumming rhythm of windshield wipers.
It looks more like how I’ve dreamed of it to look.

I, on the other hand,
look less internally like the person I’ve remembered myself to be.
Am I a ruse?
a ruse?
a ruse?

Maybe simply I’m too outwardly focused
too fragmented and scattered
across iPhone apps
and friends enmeshed I love but cannot leave.

What if I came back to myself?
Let moments matter more,
let myself loose?
What if I gave myself nineteen year-old weight?

I was heavier then.
I had heavier thighs and heavier feelings.
I had heavier thoughts and heavier leanings.
What if I came back to myself?
Gave that girl more weight?
What if I let myself loose

and held her wild, winning hand,
so we could rise up together
like paper lanterns
lifted wishes
heavy enough
to take flight.

- Carter Umhau