Photo copyright: avslt

The Seagull

Gray was a gift (and the gulls’ laughter).
A world of water was the westward road.
Wind and waves wandered ashore
to make a murderous mess of the day.
Rain and runoff ruined my sight.
The windshield wipers whined in vain.
A sea-bird showed sudden, silent before me.
He floated through fog and found his way down
to the rainbow-refracted river of blacktop.
I harbored a hope that his help would come
in the form of a funnel, a favoring updraft,
but no, naught: It was night in midday.
He struck me straight, strong with a thud.
My farewell was fleet, a final side glance
at broken and brittle battle-broad feathers.
No time for a tribute or tune from the pipes
to laud the life of a long-hoverer.

Irreversible

I brought it from the cellar,
this neglected desk fan.

It’s my multiply-blocked heart.
I’m the Invisible Woman,

you can see how clogged
my arteries are, but this cage

needs no hard-acrylic casing.
I can see its red and blue

wires right through its spoked face.
Inside sits the greasy dust

that can’t be washed away. There’s
no entry for cleaning

though I try to poke my fingers
between its plastic ribs.

A safety guard would block
the wind, could keep

Odysseus’ ship from blowing
off course as it was

destined to do. The fan switch
is faulty. Take a gentle

approach at the right angle,
or it will break and run

out of control. It will vibrate,
resonate right off the edge.

Put up a barricade of books to stop it.

About These Poems: These poems both first appeared in Stone Poetry Quarterly in May 2022. In a way, they both began in October 2012. I was taking an Advanced Poetry Class at Stockton University with Cynthia Arrieu-King. She challenged the class to write a poem a day for the month of October. We posted our poems on a private forum for each other to read and comment on. A few of my poems went on to get revised and published.

One of the prompts that month was to write a poem in Anglo-Saxon hemistich (half-lines of poetry separated by a space). Did you have to read Beowulf in high school? Then you’ve read an example of this type of poem. (Thanks, Mr. Villani.) When I revised “The Seagull,” I decided to remove the separating spaces. The poem is based on an unfortunate encounter I had. I was driving out of Atlantic City in a torrential downpour. For lovers of alliteration, you will note that I kept that part of the Anglo-Saxon form. I love alliteration, too.

“Irreversible” was written several years later, but I borrowed a prompt from that class. The poem began by listing things on my desk and became an extended metaphor comparing my heart to a desk fan. I surprised myself. I like when poems tell me things I didn’t know. I also like when they raise unanswerable questions.