Natural Attraction by B.A. Van Sise

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Gravity.  [noun]  

the natural attraction between physical bodies, 

especially when one of the bodies is celestial.

This is how it begins:

gravity has, for a brief moment,

given up the ghost. 

it’s August twenty-ninth;

it’ll always be August twenty-ninth.

school starts in a week,

and these are the last warm

evenings of that time that lasts

forever. a girl has just kissed you,

and that’s never happened before, 

and because it had never happened

it can never happen again,

like this dusk, like this warm air, 

and you’ll lie about it your whole life, 

starting now. you resisted, adamantly,

but when the boys ask you, you’ll 

tell them she used her tongue,

touched this place, and that. 

She didn’t.  But no matter; it

was enough, this is enough,

you’re suddenly taller, broader,

rushing on two wheels down the lane

that curves along the river, that curls

in the way her body didn’t, that moves

as fast as she didn’t, that hugs around

the hills the way she didn’t around yours,

and you’ll race, you and your heart,

pedaling faster and faster, and they’ll yell 

for you to slow, but you know you never can,

not now, not ever, as you sprint up the hill,

bounce off the top. Gravity, long

your constant companion, stops

just for a moment to catch its breath.

You are airborne.  You are borne by air,

and in just a moment you’ll come

tumbling down. You’ll break everything:

the bicycle, first, which will crack in two

and bend around your body, pushing

the seat up into your belly, smashing 

your arm against the pavement, 

breaking all of your legs. You’ll hit

your head, your shoulder, your chest.

You’re not there yet: now, right now,

forever, you’re over the hill, unbothered

by the road, floating five feet above

the hardest landing you’ll ever have to make—

absolutely certain for the first, and last, time,

that life is survivable.

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B.A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist focused on the intersection between language and the visual image. He is the author of the visual poetry anthology Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry with Mary-Louise Parker, and Invited to Life: After the Holocaust with Neil Gaiman, Mayim Bialik, and Sabrina Orah Mark.  He has previously been featured in solo exhibitions at the Center for Creative Photography, the Center for Jewish History and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, as well as in group exhibitions at the Peabody Essex Museum, the Museum of Photographic Arts, the Los Angeles Center of Photography and the Whitney Museum of American Art;  a number of his portraits of American poets are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. His short nonfiction has been featured in Poets & Writers, The North American Review, Nowhere, The Southampton Review, Eclectica, and The Intrepid Times, and he is a frequent reviewer of poetry and photography titles for the New York Journal of Books. He is a Prix de la Photographie Paris award-winner and an Independent Book Publishers Awards gold medalist. 

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25 July 2022