“Antidote for Rescue,” by Leslie Contreras Schwartz (Poetry ’11)

“Antidote for Rescue,” a poem by 2011 poetry graduate Leslie Contreras Schwartz, recently appeared in Zócalo. Read an excerpt below:

Inside us runs a map of our cells unmapping
in small gulps, a finite road with no rescuers.
 
I’m waving from that dead-end where the weeds
wild and lower their necks. The treefrogs gulp
 
and call up night, relief that doesn’t come.
The only respite is inside the cell, its fixed membrane
 
that unfixes and warps, the nuclear envelop that contracts.
Mitochondria tethers or isolates, withers or livens.

You can find the rest of this poem here: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/06/05/leslie-contreras-schwartz-poem-antiode-rescue/chronicles/poetry/