Mother I Could Be

Photograph of Tanezrouft Basin, Sahara Desert, in Algeria by USGS on Unsplash

Mother I Could Be

The truth of fools (and of toys) is important:  
Flashes of the no-nonsense slurs on about a future 
enthralled with likelihoods,   and       possibly  
maybe-not.

(I shook that childish 8-Ball hard too.)     Thumped it  
to make it make sense.   Tell a true story. Mine of course was Best.          
I thought about that a lot, 
and worried.

Predicaments were dire—(much was as squandered back then
as now.) 

Time though to check over your shoulder, little beach boy.  
You,  mythic son of a Great Greek he-man.  Islander. 
Sailor and outlier.          

As I said, Look here,  at your back on the beach is me, and if it weren’t
for the land-masses and time slots between us—you might have been mine,                                   

or maybe me.   

Katherine Soniat's eighth collection of poems—Polishing the Glass Storm—will be published by LSU Press in 2022. Bright Stranger was published in 2016 by that same press. The Goodbye Animals was awarded the 2014 Turtle Island Chapbook Award. A Shared Life won the Iowa Poetry Prize and The Swing Girl (LSU Press) was selected as Best Collection of 2011 by the North Carolina Poetry Council. Her poems have appeared in the Denver Quarterly, Women's Review of Books, Iowa Review, Poetry, Superstition Review, and The Nation, among others. Visit her at http://www.katherinesoniat.com

(c) 2021 Katherine Soniat