Natalie's Lit Blog

In goes the cafeteria worker in her hairnet.
In goes the philosophy teacher
explaining the theory of eternal
return, and Anton Stadler with his clarinet,
still owing money to Mozart. In
goes Mozart. Everyone flopped into the creel
of the happy fisherman, everyone eaten.
Every river is Lethean,
so why should we care
if it’s not the same river? I hate
how everything changes, tree
to failing term paper, chatelaine
to beheaded plotter, drug dealer to narc.
The heart softening faster than cereal
but then hardening to a relic
which turns into another line
of depressed poetry to recite
to the next eager trainee
anxious to be more than lint.
Going up, you’re also going down, so either
way, as your mother said, Be nice.
When she went in, she was very thin.
Earth, air, fire, water, mother.
Fish pulse slowly under the river ice.

Heraclitean by Kim Addonizio addresses the thousands of year old human pondering about how life is constantly changing and inconsistent, the flow of life and death and human mortality, She approaches this with the unique perspective of Ancient Greek philosopher Herclitus, who emphasized the flow of life and is well known for the quote “No man ever steps in the same river twice” as well as the emphasis of the elements in his work. Addonizio clearly pulls from this outside of the name of her poem coming from his philosophy. She talks about change as a flowing river, with “Every river is Lethean, so why should we care if it’s not the same river?”. She is alluding to another Greek myth in this line, the river Lethe, and how it erases the past from the memories of whoever drinks from it. So, as the river flows, the water is completely new, and as someone drinks for the river Lethe, they are completely renewed, wiped of the past. Every river is constantly becoming new and forgetting it’s past, so there’s no point in constantly worrying about it. 

The river, while being a symbol of change, also seems to represent death in some capacity in Addonizio’s interpretation. The obvious connection is once again the Lethe river, one of the five rivers in the Underworld in Greek mythology. A soul drinks from the river Lethe to be reborn and renewed, the precursor being death. The poem starts with the repetition of “In goes”, in reference to all these people from different walks of life all ending up in the Lethean river. They are compared to fish that are then eaten, all consumed by death one way or another. 

Addonizio sees death as something inevitable, just another change in life, and yet still something consistent in a life full of inconsistencies, so all the inconsistencies don’t matter because  “Every river is Lethean, so why should we care if it’s not the same river”, meaning every life ends in death so why should it matter if everything is always changing. This is again emphasized with the advice she is given, “Going up, you’re also going down, so either way, as your mother said, Be nice”, repeating the idea that no matter what, everyone is going to the same place, so no matter what you experience to get there, why cause hurt to others. Right after this we return to the idea of everyone ending up in the River Lethe, and  “When she went in, she was very thin”, as people often are thin and frail before they pass. Another reference is made to Heraclitus and his focus on the elements in the second to last line, ending the poem with the philosopher who inspired it, a cycle from life to death. Finally, a metaphor compares people to the fish in the river, with their pasts forgotten, completely renewed. In a way, this connects back to the beginning where a cafeteria worker, philosophy teacher, and musicians are all mentioned, lives that have not yet taken the final change into death. 

What I find fascinating about this poem is that Kim Addonizio finds a way to connect every single line to the next, introducing more complexities and layers with each read through. All of it feels like one big circle of life and death and the inconsistencies of existence in between. She emphasizes this through her repetition, allusions, metaphors, and even the inconsistent rhyme scheme. In fact, the only rhymes are in the first and fourth line and the fourth to last and final line, reflecting the same loop of beginning to end and back again. It’s this attention to detail that leaves me enjoying this poem no matter how many times I read it, because there is always something more to be said. 

This poem in Torrin A Greathouse’s poetry book A Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, centers around her experiences with transphobia and body dysmorphia as well as her struggles with mental health and an eating disorder.

The first thing that caught my attention about this poem was the structure, specifically the amount of blank spaces let in between lines and just the feeling of emptiness. Based on the title, I assumed there might be a connection between this idea of wanting to be nothing and the empty structure, which as I read, I found to be true. The definition of nothingness comes in many forms throughout the poem. It comes in terms of the emptiness of hunger as she “skips meals. Trimmed fat”, as a result of her eating disorder. Hunger can leave a person empty in more ways than one, it can leave a stomach empty, but it can also leave a person mentally and emotionally empty because of the exhaustion and decay hunger can cause within a person. Another definition of nothingness is tied into this, which is physical nothingness, wanting to disappear because “what better way to vanish than by mastering a stomach’s calculus”. This is also connected to the body dysmorphia she is feeling and transphobia, because if she feels she cannot exist the way that is best for her, then perhaps to her it would be easier simply to slip between the cracks and go completely unnoticed. The last definition of nothingness I felt was prevalent is the desire to start over and completely reset, becoming nothing in order to become something she feels is more true to herself.

All of these coincide with the blank spaces of the poem. It is a visual depiction of how she felt at the time, whether those blank spaces represent the nothingness she desired to be or the gaps of nothingness she desired to slip into. While reading the poem, these gaps also draw everything out, forcing me to take my time as I read through. This reflects the idea of hunger and struggles with mental health, something that is drawn out and impossible to ignore as the unusual gaps in the poem are as well. After moving past the structure of the poem, the diction was the next thing that I felt worked perfectly with the difficult theme and also the desperate, uncomfortable tone. She selected words with both a negative connotation and a cacophonous sound, making the experience all the more unpleasant in a way that symbolizes the reality of her situation. Words such as “blistering”, “slats”, “shrinking”, and “struck”, all contain very harsh consonants that are emphasized to resonate deeply and create a pang of uncomfortable emotion within, perhaps similarly to the harsh and stinging feeling of hunger. It is impossible to read this poem without at one point or another addressing the unpleasant tone built to reflect the devastatingly unpleasant feeling of feeling like a stranger in your own skin, which is an experience many transgender and queer people have to deal with, especially when they do not have a supportive environment.

This last sentiment is described in the final line of the poem, which I found to be one of the most powerful lines of the poem. I recognized this in the last poem of hers as well when she ended the poem with a short line that almost feels like a punch to the gut to get her point across. She continues the extended metaphor of fire through the final line “my body as another name for pyre”. This again connects to the idea of nothingness, because if her body is a pyre and bursts into flames, she’d physically become nothing. However, I like that in these final lines, she takes on a different tone, because rather than the self-destructive desire to disappear, she “will not let this become another metaphor for how my family taught me my body as another name for pyre”. This revelation being so drawn out, aided by the amount of empty spaces, could demonstrate the long process and the struggle it can be to work through mental health struggles and also for trans people to accept themselves and to find a community supportive of them despite being raised in an environment where they did not feel comfortable being who they are and what makes them comfortable.

My mother bought the plates because they were supposedly
marketed as unbreakable. I sweep shards from the floor 

while my brother hides in the other room. My teeth cavity 
with excuses, with I don't know my own strength. But my mother, 

she knows how easy ceramic can confetti, shrapnel, warning 
-shot, wound. She takes all the proper precautions. I remember

the too-bright paint in the corner of the kitchen wall, the cabinet 
of unmatched mugs. I'm misdiagnosed- bipolar this time - then, 

three days later, my grandmother is diagnosed with cirrhosis & isn't
this exactly what we mean when we call family by the word blood?

I buy two of everything, thick, cheap, and heavy. I don't remember 
throwing it. I joke that when I am the last child alive, there will be

nothing left to inherit. My grandmother breaks a wineglass every visit. 
Drinks herself to splinters. My mother & I both know the slow ballet

a glass shard makes beneath the skin. 

This poem is a beautiful take on chronic illness and the way it infiltrates not only the life of one individual person but also the generational impacts. It's clear the author has had a long-term struggle with mental health and disability, referenced in the line " I'm misdiagnosed- bipolar this time", the wording indicating they've had a long, likely irking and difficult process with doctors as they try to find a diagnosis. 

The title "Heirloom" in itself is such a perfect way to describe chronic illness prevalent in many people in a family that I would have never thought of but makes so much sense. Whether in terms of physical heirlooms as they are described within the poem or of an extended metaphorical connection, chronic illness can be seen as an heirloom of sorts. The only difference is that typically, when we think of heirlooms, we think something treasured and positive, but in this poem it is the idea of something passed along that people are burdened with. There is a negative perception of an heirloom, and this negative connotation  is reflected in the repetitive mention of shattered belongings. Rather than an heirloom that is whole and good, this heirloom is broken and undesirable, something that generations don't wish to pass on but cannot get rid of. 

The line "My mother & I both know the slow ballet a glass shard makes beneath the skin" is an especially powerful metaphor to make as a comparison to chronic illness and disability. It can often be difficult to understand, whether that be through an arduous medical process of years of trial and error to get an accurate diagnosis or finding a treatment that works with a person's specific needs, handling chronic illness is much like handling a shard of glass. One wrong move and the symptoms could get worse, like a piece of glass slipping between your fingers and embedding itself in your skin. Extracting that glass, backtracking, can often be more challenging, more tedious, than the original process of diagnosis and treatment ever was. This line is even more heartbreaking when considering they have to watch a loved one experience this struggle, watch the glass slowly slice away at a person's well-being and destroy the person they once were while. Simultaneously they understand that they will or already have inherited the same struggle, and as the line "I don't remember throwing it" suggests, have their own physical and mental health affected without even recognizing or finding the energy to care about the signs as her grandmother does as she "Drinks herself to splinters" and the splinters tear apart her body. 

Additionally, the structure of the line "My mother & I both know the slow ballet a glass shard makes beneath the skin", has an impact on the intensity of the poem. There is a separation ballet and a glass shard, making "a glass shard makes beneath the skin" its own line, and the shortest in the poem. This places direct emphasis on the imagery of a glass shard sinking into skin because this line is shorter than all others in the poem. When this is tied together with the fact that this is the last line of the poem, it created  this sharp, sinking feeling in my gut as Greathouse uses the final momentum to hit the hardest. This periodic sentence structure, where the story is shaped and builds up until the final moment where the main point is made, serves to create this unforgettable swell of emotion within the reader. 

Overall, as someone with a family history with experiences similar to Greathouse's, this poem is raw and unfiltered, which makes it so especially hard-hitting for a broad variety of readers. 

Torrin A. Greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. Their work has been featured in Poetry Magazine, The Rumpus, the New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Effing Foundation for Sex-Positivity, Zoeglossia, The Ragdale Foundation, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. They are the author of DEED (Wesleyan University Press, 2024) and Wound from the Mouth of a Wound (Milkweed Editions, 2020), a Minnesota Book Award and CLMP Firecracker Award finalist, and winner of the 2022 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She teaches at the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University.