They Search

1.

When I wash dishes, I think about the mutant fish

troubling the contaminated river, 

tails long as corn stalks.

I wonder if any of them are small enough to breach

this sink drain, loosen the pipes, and brim my soapy water. 

I would set aside the plates and clean the monster—

gills the size of saucers, eyes dumb 

       and tired. 

2.

During floods, the dead free themselves from their coffins 

and float to the surface like fishing lures. 

How much mortar did it take to finally seal the bodies 

above ground? 

How long until these creatures come to me, 
                                                scales shimmering with all our mistakes?

National Poetry Month 

1. 

We stand outside the library,

hand out free poems.

One girl returns.

I don’t like the one 

you gave me. Do you have 

anything happier?

I take back the stanzas 

cradle them like broken bones,

give her a sonnet about rabbits, 

how sometimes they eat 

their young,  

and sometimes not. 

2.

Now that you’re dead,

I can’t really hide 

my poems from you

any more. 

A lot of them are sad.

A lot of them are about you.

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© Copyright, 2015, M. Brett Gaffney.
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