Probably Not Tonight
Poem Review: “Hot Blood” by Chelsea B. DesAutels
“Hot Blood” by Chelsea B. DesAutels is a poem about stories. Stories that are meant to instruct us. Or is this poem about rain? And maybe rain isn’t actually rain. Maybe the rain stands for something. Consequences? Fear? Cruelty?
The poem begins with a story. The narrator reads to her freshly bathed little daughter about a sick elephant who blames his sneezing on his friend only to discover that he has a common cold. It wasn’t his friend’s fault after all. The narrator enjoys this moment. It’s comforting to be cuddling with her clean-smelling toddler when it’s raining so hard outside. She is preoccupied, though, even in the midst of such a nice moment. Her thoughts return again and again to the rain, to the consequences of this kind of rain.
“Outside, the Texas rain is flooding our dark streets again, which is something I’m starting to get used to now that we’ve lived here two years, something, I remind myself, which is not going to kill people every time, only the worst times & that is probably not tonight.”
Now that she’s lived through two years of this rain and the floods that come with it, she can find a little perspective on it. But is it perspective? Or is it just hope that THIS time won’t be the one that kills them? She listens to her partner but only halfway. She’s still thinking about the flooding. She’s hoping that her two years of experience will cushion her from unnecessary fear, from her paranoia. She tells herself that the city probably won’t sink this time.
The narrator’s partner takes their daughter off to tell her a final bedtime story. Maybe it will be the story they made up about a wolf that steals flowers from a party. But, the narrator wonders, did they make the wolf suffer the consequences of stealing enough? Did he actually learn anything?
Her partner returns and tells her about the Dancing Plague of 1518, where a whole town started dancing and couldn’t stop until they fell dead. Instead of blood-letting, which the narrator imagines would’ve stopped the “hot blood,” the government decided to build a stage and asked musicians to perform until the town had danced the disease out. But it didn’t work. A great many people died.
“Is that the whole story, I ask.”
There is no question mark for a reason. She knows from experience that it is, in fact, the whole story.
Read the whole poem at the link below, then come back here and tell me what you think. What are we supposed to take away from the poem? Where should we see ourselves? Are we the elephant who blames others for their misery? Are we the wolf that hasn’t been punished properly? Are we the hot-blooded dancers dying of fatigue? Are we the government setting up the band to watch everyone die? Or are we the mother anxiously reading a bedtime story to her daughter as the floodwaters rise higher and higher? What are the roles stories take in the poem? What are the roles stories take in life?
I can’t wait to hear what you think.
