Jana-Lee Germaine
At the Drive-In Volcano
—Soufrière, St. Lucia
We slather ourselves with mud. Grey, gritty
sludge, sulphurous, squidging into skin’s
every follicle, our whole group
giddy as children, smearing each other’s backs,
goose-bumped in early March air. The men pull
big muscle poses, women tilt hips, toss up arms,
allied here despite what life we’ve left.
We slide into the caldera’s hot
vat of black spring water and wash ourselves clean.
Later at Toraille, we brace beneath the waterfall,
shock-smacked by rapids dropped 50 feet
onto our heads, thought numbed into pure
flash, heaven’s flood funneled
through this crack in the rock, regrets
swept to stone steps. I am socked
by this cold cataclysm, I am slap-happy
in clap and clout of water, my edges erased,
leaning into plain force. Is this how it feels
to press back against the whole world,
is this what it means to drink?
Back to Issue XI…
Jana-Lee Germaine is a recipient of the Patricia Dobler Poetry Award. She is Senior Poetry Reader for Ploughshares. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Water~Stone Review, Chautauqua, Chestnut Review, Tinderbox, New Ohio Review, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, EcoTheo Review, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. She earned an MFA from Emerson College. She lives with her husband, four children, and four rescue cats in semi-rural Massachusetts. She is a member of the Board of Trustees for her local public library, and she can be found online at janaleegermaine.com.
