Sopped in chrysanthemum, she bows in, singing
stanzas from Atlantic shanties. Gold-leafed,
plank-walker’s wet dream, to see the wood fold slip,
copper nipples milk green towards the ocean’s glass.
Her scapulae of wing and rope, low sails curtain
for her encore as she tailgates the grimaced sun.
No one knows about the shimmy she does at dusk,
the way she houses blowfish as they lift for curtsies
at her bust. King crabs collect the dowries of her
devotees: albatross and porpoise. So slightly
cracked she bends towards the waistline
of a milk-dawn, doesn’t know East from
South, her sunken prow regains momentum
as she sinks to see the prismed coral of a shipwreck.
Robin Richardson is the author of Knife Throwing Through Self- Hypnosis (ECW Press, 2013) and Grunt of the Minotaur (Insomniac Press, 2011). She has been shortlisted for the ReLit award and longlisted for the CBC Poetry Award, and won the John B. Santoianni Award and the Joan T. Baldwin Award. She holds a master of fine arts in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and currently divides her time between Toronto and New York.
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