Night Creature
I lie here, breath and heartbeat.
Maybe it jumped
or fell from the branches.
And there it goes again--the scuttering.
I try to picture it,
but it's like trying to imagine what's beyond the skin of the universe.
The scratching
softly defines the roof.
Whatever I was dreaming, I can't remember now.
Petra Whitaker
The Solitary Plover, 2020
Maybe it jumped
or fell from the branches.
And there it goes again--the scuttering.
I try to picture it,
but it's like trying to imagine what's beyond the skin of the universe.
The scratching
softly defines the roof.
Whatever I was dreaming, I can't remember now.
Petra Whitaker
The Solitary Plover, 2020
A Crow Stands in the Zebra-Striped Crosswalk on Siskiyou Blvd.
My foot on the brake, I stare
and I remember reading somewhere
that Ringo Starr’s black jacket is for sale on eBay
with a signed letter of authenticity
from his girlfriend, Nancy Andrews.
A truck behind me honks.
The crow tilts its eye, then waddles
across another wide stripe.
In London, there’s a webcam
mounted at the corner of Abbey Road,
and you can log on 24 hours a day
to watch people cross the street.
The truck driver swerves
and misses the bird.
Tourists in the busy intersection
near Garden and Grove End Road stop
to have their picture taken.
They walk in groups of four,
and there’s always someone with bare feet,
posing like McCartney.
They stand in mid-stride
facing the oncoming traffic.
First published in Poydras Review
Another Santa Ana
If you’ve ever lived inland,
you know its scream.
This cat-in-heat
scratch-the-doorpost wind.
It bangs the gate all night, wrestles coyotes
down from the hills,
yanks your sheets off,
finds you reaching for a lover in your sleep.
It shakes the eucalyptus,
jabbers the crows,
riddles the chain link fence
with tumbleweeds.
A plastic bag levitates.
Barking dog.
Sand on the window blinds.
A brown bird thumps the glass and is gone.
First published in Fault Lines: A New Journal of West Coast Poetry
What the Water Gave Meafter a painting by Frida Kahlo, What the Water Gave Me, 1938
When you’ve nearly died, you wake and paint a portrait of your red dress drowning. You feel your feet again, cold on the bathtub’s rim. A drip ripples the water’s mirror. Your toe pushes through the metal ring of the rubber stopper stuck in the drain’s black throat. You don’t remember your dreams, except the ones in black-and-white. Your knees are islands. Water floods the labyrinths of your ears. The swoosh, the murmur beats so clearly against the hum. Rubber ducks float among water lilies; their roots graze your sleeping thighs. Someone has painted your parents’ noses where each beak should be. You kiss the Chac Mool. His stone hands hold your cheeks, and you promise him you’ll stop sketching maggots but you paint yourself floating. Below the drifting garlic of your limp neck, a goddess holds her breath. Her hazel eyes are color blind. You lie beside yourself, watch a robin go rigid and fall, its claws still clench the perch of the tree that flowers on the street where you grew up in a turquoise house. Published in The Applicant |
Frida Kahlo, What the Water Gave Me, 1938
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