Poem For the Relief of Fallen Women
This wishing well is bottomless.
A penny from heaven would drop
all the way to the Indian Ocean
(Not China, as you were always told)
to land in the hand of some fisherman
as he guts some great, gasping fish,
its eye a coin emptied of value.
They’re always grasping something,
men. Always holding anything but
the bag. You, you’re holding a knife
at an oblique angle to the world,
away from your body, every body.
The cutting board is a map of erasures.
There are all these onions, waiting.
The setting sun above the sink turns
their tight shawls of white skin pink.
But they are merely onions, not fish.
You spit out the hooks. There is no wish.
Gregory Crosby |