• Poems

    Cheryl Wilder: 2 poems

    Cheryl Wilder

    right /rīt

    verb. restore to a normal correct condition or situation: As in, there is no way to right the crash.
    Nothing to turn back over. We didn’t capsize as much as we shattered. I want to right my life,
    meaning, I want to hug my friend until we fall over, jump in his car on the way to lunch shifts
    overlooking the ocean, be inside the weightlessness of a twenty-year-old body. But there is only a
    new normal, a new correct condition: My worth an open wound on the body of the masses.

     

    Slipped

    I
    We drank
                                          and danced
                            in dive bars.

    As we walked to the car
                                         humidity glistened toxic
                           and you threw me the keys,
    I threw them back,
                                          you threw them to me,
                            those rigid teeth

    in-between my fingers. You slipped
                                          in the passenger seat
                            and I took the wheel.

    I took the wheel and you put on California Dreamin’.
                                          We sang.
                            I swayed my shoulders
    and you shimmied your feet
                                          to the pop harmony
                            until the rain-slick curve

    took the car                                     
                                          took the wheel
                            and we slipped

    until laughter was slapped
                                          from our bodies.

    II

    Air entered and left my nose.
                                          Opening my eyes, I recognized
                            the steering wheel, the dashboard
    my hands, my legs, the quiet stereo
                                          and draped over the center console
                            a limp body.

    Curly hair bunched around a collared button-up
                                          still sweaty from dancing.
                            I held my breath

    leaned close to the side of your face
                                          closed my eyes as if
                            I could disappear

    pleaded, with wet words
                                          as tears dripped onto my tongue,
                            Get up, get out of the car.

    Please get up.
                                          Pleeeaaase wake up,
                            your current of breath my only answer.

    I wanted to run. I had to get help.
                                          I entered the June air and froze
                            under yellow streetlights

    that beat
                                          on
                            and off.

    III

    I stood in the middle
                                          of the street, the car wrapped
                           around a pole, you still

    inside. I heard sirens grow
                                          close, thought of my sheets, how
                           cool they are in the humid hot

    summer, and wanted to lie down
                                          between them as I lost the last moment
                           of a person that was me.
    I was taken
                                          from the scene, you were lifted
                           carefully, I’m sure. They checked
    my breath, gave me an orange
                                          jumpsuit, bustled around my purpose
                           my meaning and I didn’t

    mean to, I didn’t mean to,
                                          I didn’t—
                           but what does that change?

    I wouldn’t struggle against handcuffs
                                          never challenged the paperwork process
                           could only hear blood

    curdling in the background.

     

    “right /rīt” was first published in the author’s book, Singing Riptide (Press 53)
    “Slipped” was first published in the author’s book,     Anything That Happens (Press 53)

    Cheryl Wilder’s decades-long reckoning with the decision to drive drunk, which left her friend and passenger severely and permanently injured, taught her that self-forgiveness must lead to genuine moral repair. As a poet, Cheryl uses the personal lyric to “translate” her reckoning into language, an active taking-hold of her emotional life. Her collection, Anything That Happens (Press 53), is an acute examination of shame in the aftermath of the crash. Its companion collection, Singing Riptide (Press 53), supported by the North Caroling Arts Council, is her journey from all-consuming shame to self-realization and belonging.  Cheryl is an arts and culture leader in the community-led initiative For Alamance, inspiring her to “translate” collective crises into language that explores moral injury and the need for mass forgiveness.