by Lizzy Ke Polishan
over a tangled ruin of rubber, I bend to tie her shoes.
we wade through standing water, the sky a hanging garden
about to open and water itself. a snake confusing
a path around a rock / a kingfisher dead on the faraway shore.
she hitches up her skirt over dark jelly, and a galaxy
of tadpoles swirls toward damp light. when the wind flickers,
when all the elements are magnified, I want to leave,
but she keeps going out, toward the body
of the bird she wants to bury, a ribbon of seaweed clinging
like a discarded letter to her calf. my ruined shoes / and
something forgotten in my pocket—an orange softened in time. I rotate
the globe of its ripe weight. when I look up,
she is far away, half her body lost underwater. her voice
is a ghost, whistling with wind over patchy rocks.
I need her to stop. I need a rowboat. I need something sacred
with a rope. but she keeps getting farther away
until her head is something I can pinch between two fingers,
and I am losing my ability to stand, or see, or hear
anything but the pound of water on water, the roar of wind against wind.
::
Lizzy Ke Polishan is the author of the poetry collection A Little Book of Blooms (2020) and the recipient of the Eleanor B North Poetry Award (2017). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rhino, PRISM International, and Tipton Poetry Journal, among others. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.
Image: Stephen Pedersen
Image description: white birds gathered on gray water.
Psaltery & Lyre 