Daniel Blokh: What My Body Knows And What It Doesn't

What Fire Trucks Stop For and What They Don’t

What my body knows and what it doesn't.

This question always in the back of my head like a stove

I can’t turn off. What it knows: her hand against it. 

The spider creep slow, nails cold, alarm blaring. Fire truck & skin & skin &

it’s ridiculous, but her hand seems to be made of wheels.

Her hand is feeding me my own blood, my own skin

& skin never runs out. Her hand has miles and miles to go

to destination. She smiles openmouthed, like she knows what my skin hides

and what to cook it into, what temperature. Like she knows every nerve’s secret

before I see it, knows what my body is and what it isn’t. Fire truck,

fire truck, I’m burning or made of fire. I’m still young. I don’t want your saving.

I don’t want to be put out yet. I close the windows

and pray in the fumes. Red light / red light /

red light.

This poem was originally published at SUSAN / The Journal.

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Daniel Blokh is a 16-year-old American writer of Russian-Jewish descent, living in Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of the memoir In Migration (BAM! Publishing 2016), the micro-chapbook The Wading Room (Origami Poems Project 2016), and the chapbook Grimmening (forthcoming from Diode Editions). His work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing awards and the Foyle Young Poet awards, and has appeared in DIALOGIST, Permafrost, Blueshift, Cleaver, Gigantic Sequins, Forage Poetry, Avis, Thin Air, Cicada, and more.  He's bad at taking naps, which sucks, because he really needs a nap right now.