Robber Sentenced to Reflection
We bank sneaks do it for the back- jumping buzz and for the poetry of course, iamb after iamb of ka- klink in our birdcage coffers. The beard-jammer (that shitty shirtrabbit) dropped from the eaves after a whole lot of listening and squashed my swagger in seconds. So here I am on yonder Ponder Island, forced to forgo the fizz powder that used to give me the good go-ahead, count my every blink and contemplate. It’s always claws for breakfast, then around eye-flicker five thousand he comes in to cat-cuff me, to drone on about the bone orchard or the Burlap Sisters (buzz-nappers all three) who never went free. They didn’t do dialogue. They were islands of their own. Each midnight (thrice daily) I scan the skies for wormholes, which I know is flimsy whimsy, as if I’ll swoon through space into a dimension where there are cackle-tubs full of jokes and tenth chances. Still, I keep the old big-eye open. When I can I prowl the caper-cove hooting help! My sentence: twelve years of mirror manufacture. Not even one lousy weak- ankled gerund. There’s no magic in mirrors but in verbs, hey-brim- ho yes. I narrate my movements to myself with as many as possible—I grind, polish, whistle, wish, but I worry I’m losing the lingo. I never look at my show-me in the glass— it fazzles me. Instead I count what I’ve sent down the wormholes in the past: one year of daily weather diagrams and owl-falls, an exquisite equation for unlocking a safe. I think there are other worlds out there and perhaps in a quicksquint I’ll catch a glimpse of my double (Little-Go- Cheat or Lizzy-Loll- Tongue I call her). Worst: We’re handcuff- Married. Best: Thanks to me her nimbles unlatch a door and cull-money silvers into her lap. She imagines my sky. Sends me hers.
Copyright © 2018 by Matthea Harvey. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 7, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.