Lesson VIII: Map of North America

Elizabeth Bradfield

—redacted from Smith’s Quarto, or Second Book in Geography, 1848, p. 17

division

general divisions

opposite
cluster clusters What considerable number

Where is
Where is Cape Farewell?

What sound leads into the largest

What What What What

Boundaries Bound United Bound
the New ? Bound possessions?

What What What What

prevails

What What What What

races What race ?

Signing on Again

Down crew-only stairs—paint-chipped rail, hand-grimed bulkheads, watertight door’s caution-striped sill—to crew mess. Sit at sticky, vinyl tablecloth (deep bluewater) before ship’s registry (a white craft afloat). Sign in, sign on: name, address, emergency contact, bank details. Instructions slurried through Finance’s Greek & Safety’s Bulgarian accents. Nod understood, understood when sentences end in crest. Get lifejacket with green laminated card carabinered to chest, billet number on front. All expedition staff P-something. This time: Papa Nine Three.

Elizabeth Bradfield

2018

Learning to Swim

after Bob Hicok & Aracelis Girmay

Now forty-five, having outlasted some of
myself, I must reflect: what if I hadn’t been held
by my mom in the YWCA basement
pool, her white hands slick under

my almost-toddler armpits, her thumbs
and fingers firm around my ribs (which
is to say lungs), held gently as a liverwurst
sandwich and pulled, kindly, under?

Elizabeth Bradfield

2017

Pursuit

for Arctic Explorer Donald B. MacMillan
Provincetown, September

All summer, town kids pose at the edge
of the pier named after you

and leap. I’ve just flown home from Baffin,
Mac. A month of spotting polar bears,

Elizabeth Bradfield

2016

Poems

Lesson VIII: Map of North America

More by this poet

Signing on Again

Learning to Swim

Pursuit

Poems

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Lesson VIII: Map of North America

More by this poet

Signing on Again

Learning to Swim

Pursuit

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