By Henrietta Goodman
Angelfish
A long time ago, a girl considered beauty—maybe like
Night, like a sheet over furniture, something disguised it. Maybe like a
Ghost, it could last without physical form. But how? And could she
Ever be beautiful? That winter, all the other girls had feathered hair,
Like wings. At the mall, the angelfish shimmered silver in tropical water—
Fragile aimless arrows, impossibly thin. The girls had lacy snowflakes melting
In their hair. Ask long enough, and you receive a polar truth in a
Small glass bowl—cheaper than beauty and more lasting. This is what
Happens—the body twists, then leaps, then dries on the table like a leaf.
Dragonfly
Darners, like the one I used to stitch a heart, crooked and
Red, inside each wrist of a man’s wool mittens—over the radial
Artery, a spell. Winter, nymphs sealed wingless under ice,
Grass drab and flat. Their migration, a one-way flight over
Open sea. Only DNA and instinct return. In myth, their
Needles sew lips and eyes shut—they weigh the soul and
Find it lacking. Translucent, their wings shimmer in summer
Light, iridescent. We don’t think then of descent. For
Years, we dive and surface, dive and float.
Whippoorwill
While thou art pouring forth—familiar accent,
Hidden source. Your giant mouth and whittled feathers
I only know from pictures. Poor Will, whoever he is. And
Poor woman, practicing late—under the shriek of high C, the
Piano’s dead key clunking. Can I call thy high requiem a song?
Over the buzz of cicadas, you gulp moths—no more songbird than I am—
Old man up late on a trailer porch with a glass of whiskey,
Red-eyed goatsucker of the southern night,
Whiskered and misunderstood. Darkling, anti-nightingale,
I listen, not to the rumors but to the clear,
Literate notes of your vibrato
Looping your name under the moon.
Henrietta Goodman is the author of All That Held Us (BkMk Press, 2018), Hungry Moon (Colorado State University, 2013), and Take What You Want (Alice James Books, 2007). Her poems in this issue are from a collaborative manuscript of dual acrostic alphabets contemplating the intersections of the human and non-human animal worlds.