12.02.2023

from far away it looks like I’m a baby riding a dinosaur

I'm learning that, when I'm on a project, writing takes more out of me than I can afford to give. Lesson: prepare more posts when I'm not working, so I won't stretch too thin while I am! 

In the meantime, here's a poem.


 
I have a fish’s tail, so I’m not qualified to love you.
But I do. Pale as an August sky, pale as flour milled
a thousand times, pale as the icebergs I have never seen,
and twice as numb—my skin is such a contrast to the rough
rocks I lie on, that from far away it looks like I’m a baby
riding a dinosaur. The turn of centuries or the turn
of a page means the same to me, little or nothing.
I have teeth in places you’d never suspect. Come. Kiss me
and die soon. I slap my tail in the shallows—which is to say
I appreciate nature. You see my sisters and me perched
on rocks and tiny islands here and there for miles:
untangling our hair with our fingers, eating seaweed.

[Amy Gerstler {1956- }, 'Siren', from Bitter Angel]

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