Antarctica – by Andrew Sutherland
RUNNER-UP IN THE GWEN HARWOOD POETRY PRIZE 2022
I was thinking about Antarctica
how even in the last landmass labelled great unknown
there are stations // there are borders
how covid was on six continents of the world
and then in late 2020, people on the Chilean station tested positive
and suddenly // it was on seven
how on the other side // the Arctic // scalping world
there are supposed to be these ancient viruses in the permafrost
and that’s melting // and they’re melting
ready to return to us, unchanged
so I wanted to go to Antarctica
I’d take all my medications
find my way on some research vessel
and in the centre of an endless sheet of ice // make
the tiniest // safest cut
and freeze the HIV in my blood down in that great mass
how I would persist // beyond myself
although I suppose that would only melt, too
the way things are going
I guess I want to remain somewhere
make a mirror // diseases thawing // older than dinosaur hearts
of course I won’t do it.
I think it’s probably a crime.
bio-hazard // viral body
out of the body // down in the ice
and who can afford to go to Antarctica anyway // in this climate
once // after a surgery // I nearly bled out
and it seemed quite funny to me at the time
that even when most of the blood is gone
the amount of HIV presumably stays the same?
how it all just replicates a little further
and then you’re full again
I was reading about some human trials
for a functional cure
it’s a cut // at the cellular level
and then it’s neutralised
the virus is effectively gone
I know it’s monumental
but I felt // for a second // this selfish kind of unease
which is maybe hard to explain // if you’re not Poz
or, I don’t know, if you’re not me
but I was afraid // for a second // that I wouldn’t know myself
for the tiniest // safest moment
I felt a kind of melting
at the thought of a cure
that I wouldn’t ever recognise myself again
like how Antarctica used to be rainforest
in some supergreenhouse era // a temperate
tangle of vines // at the bottom of the earth
how it could be again // they say
the way things are going
and I thought, if that happens
that functional cut // that vanishing act
there could still be a part // a trace
Antarctica. before I come to melt
is this a very colonial impulse?
to want to freeze // where you shouldn’t
see deeper inside yourself // beneath
the borders of your body // where you shouldn’t
I just wanted to remember myself
and in my southernmost, be liquid // melting
like the wicked witch of the west
if the wicked witch were a virus on the seventh continent
and all the penguins there // dead friends of Dorothy
and the children’s children of my blood
will wander with the heat // the trees
Image: Kyle Mortara
This poem appeared in Island 164 in 2022. Order a print issue here.
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