Shipwreck
I was shipwrecked beneath a stormless sky
in a sea shallow enough to stand up in.
— Fernando Pessoa
They’re laughable
when we get there—
the ultimate articulations
of despair: trapped
in a tub filling with
our own tears; strapped
to a breadstick mast
a mouse could chew
down; hopping around
the house in paper shackles
wrist and ankle. It’s
always stagey. Being
lost is just one’s fancy—
some cloth, some paste—
the essence of flimsy.
Therefore we
double don’t know
why we don’t take off
the Crusoe rags, step
off the island, bow
from the waist, accept
your kudos.
Kay Ryan
🙏
Again a Solstice
It is not good to think
of everything as a mistake. I asked
for bacon in my sandwich, and then
I asked for more. Mistake.
I told you the truth about my scar:
I did not use a knife. I lied
about what he did to my faith
in loneliness. Both mistakes.
That there is always a you. Mistake.
Faith in loneliness, my mother proclaimed,
is faith in self. My instinct, a poor polaris.
Not a mistake is the blue boredom
of a summer lake. O mud, sun, and algae!
We swim in glittering murk.
I tread, you tread. There are children
testing the deep end, shriek and stroke,
the lifeguard perilously close to diving.
I tried diving once. I dove like a brick.
It was a mistake to ask the $30 prophet
for a $20 prophecy. A mistake to believe.
I was young and broke. I swam
in a stolen reservoir then, not even a lake.
Her prophesy: from my vagrant exertion
I'll die at 42. Our dog totters across the lake,
kicks the ripple. I tread, you tread.
What does it even mean to write a poem?
It means today
I'm correcting my mistakes.
It means I don't want to be lonely.
Jennifer Chang
🙏
Number 1 son called with good news this morning.
