NEW POEMS
GOLDFISH: A DIPTYCH
– Science has proven the goldfish
has a memory of a second and a half.
1. TALE OF A GOLDFISH
Look, there's a castle,
submerged so its world magnifies
in water hazed with algae,
but I see willow, sun, a dragonfly.
Look, a castle—
rays of sunlight through its doorway,
a mermaid on a rock
amid roots and burnished shells.
Look, there's a castle,
and I angle through the door, out the window,
everything static,
yet behind I sense a shadow.
Look—
its distorted world is pooling,
until I see a rock with no mermaid,
sense jaws of darkness.
Look, there's...
∞
2. A MAN IS A GOLDFISH WITH LEGS
Look, there's a castle,
where Circe turns seamen to swimming pigs
while the universe expands,
so watch out for solar glare.
Look, there's...
and at its hearth, a clockwise flame,
but below continents of ice,
stress lines.
Look, a castle—
and a pearl at my throat to keep me alive,
yet if there's heat lightning,
Venus will wink at daybreak.
Look—
how Circe takes up the pearl,
and Venus, in morning sun, floats fire and ice,
and may her lightning give you pause.
Some days — it's less than a second.
FIELD MAGAZINE, Fall 2005
Selected for PUSHCART PRIZE XXXI, Best of the Small Presses
AN ELEGY FOR A LOST COIN
Lost is when the trail frays to a deer path
or dust where footprints fade in August wind.
Maps can't chart the trail of a woman and man,
of a blue guitar and hot brandy, his song a tongue
never tracked, his coin unmarked.
This path is hard and rocky, the man once told
her. Density can't be provoked.
Shades of meaning are either found or forgotten
by a magpie mind, and bright bits of matter spin
like fireflies in a jar.
Yet fireflies spark less when the moon wanes,
tides are high then and low. So the boy
in the woods who follows a dog will be
lost near Almanor, and the girl who wants to
starve herself will keep on hiding the clues.
Or maybe lost is the arm-taped waitress,
the young one who tells her tale from table to
table at the Sand Dollar. Sister-daughter-roommate,
order the ribs, on Sunday no X-rays,
then the chiropractor made it worse. Tip her more,
her wrist is broken, but she can't call her father.
He's used her, so she's lost more than money,
lost trust, the nose stud, the aubergine hair,
the certain self—like the hungry girl
or the boy in the trees chasing a phantom dog.
Lost, like the dream I won't tell: how the man
with the blue guitar and I watch a dryer spin.
How we kiss while I try to nurse his child
who's failed to thrive, offering
a breast now soft and milkless as we pluck
an idle song. O sing me, Cavalier, toast me
once again. Don't make me search for
firefly globes I pinched for jewels
or drag Almanor for the boy-child's pack,
for the girl, weightless as wind-sifted sand.
Though I've picked up old coin to pay the ferryman,
I'm not the waitress, not boy or girl but the woman,
and what I've lost must be spoken.
THE JOURNAL, Spring/Summer 2007
POSSIBILITY OF INNISFREE
In some lost universe where Innisfree
had a rock with an iron handle,
before e. coli or giardia,
they knelt at the edge of streams,
cupped clear water in their hands
and drank to quench their thirst.
Then, lake isles were still safe havens
for the young and unmoored.
Then, they roasted stolen horse corn,
baked berry pies in a campfire oven.
They didn’t know embers could grow cool,
or that the waxed moon would wane.
How careless they’ve become yet careful.
They drink now from plastic bottles,
But have lost the path to Innisfree.
The moon is dark. The fire is out.
TERTULIA, Summer 2008
Painting: Jeremy Thornton
Susan Terris
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