ANOTHER METONYM (or the hot plate)
“The hot plate was hauled from the Bronx River
by Bronx River Restoration Project volunteers.”
one coiled plate masquerades
as oven
dryer
clean river
warming room
dinner
fixture futures
serves up
the order inside the room, isn’t it?
not all objects are expendable
durable dinners then drive through
24 miles of the Bronx River then
fresh water enters inside the city
warming room
strained the river
hot plate
single burner
slow dinner
heat comes to the middle
ripples out when it’s ready
takes its time then through
fix our minds to the four corners
use the oven more
stick to warming foods
do the dead of summer
dearth of winter more
place the pan on the plate
small tokens
rolled nickels
rolled dimes
swallowed it down like a fortune
inside me grew an oven
conscripted to
its one use—
place the pan on the hot plate
because now it is what we have
stay with me
learn the room
watch the pan’s butter
roil hellishly like a hot planet
butter separates by density
clarified
clean logic
the plate’s heat gets under my skin
everywhere.
generates the iron-red coils to mean ready
leaves me a mess
leaves me to watch the soup—next one to roil hellishly
it finishes and we power down
the plate
thank it for its service
dip it into the Bronx River to clean it
fresh water gets inside the city
did you want another kind of life?
dreamt of your gas cooktop?
rolled pennies
roiled nickles
degenerate
hands tied behind my back
let live
I am gracious
it finishes
the plate cools
leaves me a mess
mess ripples out then through me
use the hot plate as you would all heat—
to keep a lit furnace lit
certainty
futures
iron in the pleats
gather the matter
set it aside near the hot plate
of all the objects discarded in the river
collections of bric-a-brac
tinsel
filmic vision
heat radiates evenly
we only took it to the river to clean it
Object
Body of Water
About the Artist
Asiya Wadud is the author of Crosslight for Youngbird (Nightboat Books, 2018), a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry. Her other collections include day pulls down the sky / a filament in gold leaf, written collaboratively with Okwui Okpokwasili (Belladonna/ Danspace, 2019) and Syncope (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019). No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body is forthcoming from Nightboat Books. Asiya teaches poetry to children at Saint Ann’s School and occasionally leads an English conversation group for new immigrants at the Brooklyn Public Library. A member of the Belladonna Collaborative, her work has been supported by the Foundation Jan Michalski, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Danspace Project, Brooklyn Poets, Dickinson House, Mount Tremper Arts, and the New York Public Library, among others. Recent work appears in e-flux, BOMB Magazine, Poem-a-Day, Chicago Review, Social Text, FENCE, and elsewhere. Asiya is a 2019-2020 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Artist-in-Residence and also currently a writer-in-residence at Danspace Project. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, where she loves animals.