by JoAnn Zhang
/ Poetry /
A thick blue knit tucks over
the edge, over and over
some massless thing
the fishermen cannot see.
They go by busily in boats
and no longer bother with her.
They cluck like hens over thin
chrome tongues palming silver
fish jolting their last instincts.
And posed over the oak belt
pinning the shoals, a man
rocked on his heels, a collared
impatience in the purse of his mouth,
and a girl watching the sky’s Leo
theatre, as slowly the purple mane
wrings into the sea.
He turns back, already in the
air-conditioned puritan
suite, and in her backwards
look, she sees a wives’ tale:
that rondure tip of pure yellow, that
last gasp under darkening aubergine,
the heavy wine-black susurrus
of the drowning sea.