Mary B. Moore
Unheroic Couplets
Shading your eyes, one hand for awning,
you pose, Nelsonian, legs spread
on the prow of Determination,
Enterprise, the gunship You. Turner
might have painted it.
The bridge’s bully pulpit suits you,
but the animal body undoes the op:
you yawn. If only you’d done more recon,
could command at least the body’s ship.
Never mind. Your pupils pinpoint
in the light reflection multiplies
off the wimpling and dimpling water—
Is it like a nun, a woman? It seems
all surface anyway, your domain.
Four cormorants bob up, then dive; a stink
of kelp ribbons and bulbs the sea
in olive green, a drab birthday’s
decor, or a crab’s; an egret
so white he could launch a new spectrum
sedillas by. You are emperor
of seems and looks,
but the sea’s all one down
to the drowned. You sea-saw
on the tidings already,
small bottle, little man,
your mouth a yawn.
Mary B. Moore is the author of Amanda and the Man Soul (Emrys Press, 2017) winner of the Emrys Press poetry chapbook competition, selected by Dorianne Laux; Flicker (Broadkill River Press, 2016), winner of the Dogfish Head Poetry prize, judged by Carol Frost, Baron Wormser, and Jan Beatty; Eating the Light (Sable Books 2016), winner of the Sable Books Chapbook Contest, judged by Allison Joseph; and The Book Of Snow (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1998). Recent work appears in Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Nimrod, Fire and Rain, Ecopoetry of California, Orison’s 2017 anthology, Poem/Memoir/Story, the Nasty Women Anthology, Minerva Rising, and Cider Press Review Best of Volume 16. Her website is marybmoorepoetry.com.
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