Retablo for impossible waters
Every river a keening.
The Seine: I was flayed on my back, dress
shrouding, shoes drifting away, I was inventing
my own madness and drowning
happily in it.
The Rhine: I posed on a rock, singing men
to their deaths, that must
have been me, the woman left and lost and singing,
isn’t that the cliché, victim swung aggressor?
Unnamed river: taunting.
Every river a repository for the impossible
or what I feared was failure, all my seasons overflowing
with need.
Every river a conversation in a cryptic language,
I waved my forked stick, seeking
hidden branches, lost tributaries, the tense fable
of skin.
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