Swimming Lessons
By Karen McPherson
April 15, 2024
April 15, 2024
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They called it the dead man’s float and we were dead in the water like Jesus on the cross but flat and wet and holding our breath for hours almost to bursting while the skin on our outstretched arms pimpled with cold and our hair floated around our heads like pond weed or gasoline though this was only at the very end because first it had taken us more than a few minutes to venture gingerly on tiptoes into the icy water of the lake in the area marked off between the orange cones and then there had been the back floats and kicking and practice breathing and cupping and pulling with hands while we shivered and sputtered and followed directions until at last it was time for the finale facedown eyes closed not breathing and then only then having been dead men floating we clambered out to dry off as best we could with sandy towels already damp from the ground where we’d dropped them with our piled-up shoes and clothes and our bag lunches and while eating our sandwiches we teased each other about the dog paddle and peeing in the lake and how Jenny’s brother’s suit almost fell off and we argued about who could really swim and who would or wouldn’t be too afraid to dive off the dock and when the schoolbus pulled back in we just yanked on shirts and shorts right over our sodden suits and crowded back onboard where all the way home I leaned my head against the window reflecting on the peacefulness of pretending to be dead.
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Karen McPherson (she/her) is a post-academic, wokeproud, elderqueer poet and literary translator. She has published one full-length collection, Skein of Light (2014) and the chapbook Sketching Elise. Her work has appeared in literary journals including Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Atlanta Review, december, and The Women’s Review of Books. Between 2013 and 2017, she worked as an editor in the Airlie Press poetry collective.
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Author's Note:
Childhood included a lot of lessons—because there were so many things to learn to do. Piano lessons, dancing lessons, and later, driving lessons—whose memories I carry in my body. An index finger finding middle C, a boy’s sweaty palm, the footplay of gas and clutch. Swimming lessons were gooseflesh, icy water, damp towels, sandy sandwiches. But also that final float, with its intriguingly unsettling name. A timeless suspension somewhere between swimming and drowning.