Fish Talk
Deep under.
Right next to the river
which could break through
any time. My little girl
doesn’t like it either.
She’s uneasy.
It’s dark.
Spotlights.
We walk through the tunnel
made of glass. I feel the weight
of the water. The shark
glides past overhead.
Cold eyes.
It reminds me of someone
from my past, the strong, silent type
with an appetite for sex.
The manta ray is all elegance
and smiling indulgence.
Effulgence.
Forbearance.
Absolution.
Public Relations.
From the other side of the glass
a smaller fish is vying for attention
and bobs close whenever I lift
the camera. Puffs up. Ready to talk.
Face of a round, ambitious politician.
We might as well all be talking to the fish.
When the ducks skated on the
pond
It came overnight.
That winter when I skied to school
straight from the window
because the snow piled up
high against the front door,
when the hares begged by the
fence and our mothers wondered
where the carrots had gone,
and the deer came to where
the wood met the open field,
bewildered eyes.
White begat white. Not a melt
in sight; the branches heavy
under their burden,
the pump in the yard iced up.
My woolen gloves stuck
to the brass knocker on the school door,
icicles shimmering in the sharp
morning sun.
And there was silence.
Madelaine
Madelaine used to scream
her orgasms. Summer-night windows,
blue beat from next-door’s deck.
Humid gardens.
Deadly nightshade.
Poison ivy.
Lustful Madelaine,
you and your lover
made beautiful music.
Let it be, let it be.
The cat slinks
through the hedges.A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm lives and works in Lima, Peru. Author of two novels and a poetry collection published in 2011 in the UK, ‘TANGENTS’, her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a good two dozen US poetry reviews as well as some print anthologies, and Diane Lockward’s The Crafty Poet. She won third price in in the 2009 Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse (US), and has been a finalist in several GR contests, winning it in October 2014.
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