Poetry Wednesday

Stay

Into the sea, holding a fish,

you are settled, and do not think of dropping her.

You dream at night, sometimes

of Open-Arms-and-Swim-Away.

It is a hungry dream, made

in the grey-turning-of-things,

of the tide,

of the pause to remember

the way things float in a net

with the doomed fishes

and sink with them.

I’ve named her,

(You say it is too early) but

I know you love this

fish.

Annnnnnnnnnnnnd, something(s) not-mine that I love:


Oh, atlas
by Joshua Beckman

Oh, atlas
look
you forgot my island.


She Considers Trading Her Secrets
by Catherine Pierce

These girls, she says. These girls, I could smite them.

These girls, if they knew about the tree inside me, or

the rabbit trap, or the plastic doll parts. If they knew

about the dog I walk each night in my dreams, her big

teeth showing, her paws like dinner plates. If they knew

how I like knowing she could eat me but chooses not to.

That is how I feel safest. These girls. If they saw me lit

by the dome light of my station wagon. If they saw me under

his hands during the ice storm. What would they say?

Would they kiss me? Would they share their licorice

and chlamydia? Would we talk about equations as if

they held the world? Oh, these girls. They are dumb

as bicycles. Their eyes like tree knots. Their smiles

like paper. If they knew that my world is not their world,

is gloaming-colored and damp, echoes with howls and bells,

floats in the space between the desert and the past—

would they ride the carousel next to me? Would they,

for once, give me the best horse?