Three poems

Patricia Russo

Feathers

While we're eating feathers
The day becomes a river
Rushing overhead
 
If I gather the water
I might be able to wash
The clotted, cloudy silence
Into some semblance of blue
 
But I don't know how
 
While we're eating feathers
A bird tries to sing.

​

Ghost Fish

The kid with the tangerine fingernails
Said there were ghost fish in the trees
Behind the shuttered shoe store just off Sixth
Red-hued, slender as threads,
And easiest to see in the hour after dawn.
 
I thanked them for this information
With a cup of coffee from the better bodega,
And spent the day wondering
   Why they were red
   And why so much smaller now
   And whether they still sounded like glass bells
       when they sang.
 
Until I remembered
That I'd only ever seen the ghost fish before in dreams
So the kid with the tangerine nails
Was one up on me in life.
 
This did not make my dawn coffee less bitter
But I sipped it, resolutely,
As I walked the long road by the river
Counting down from sixty-one to six.



Advice

Don’t get your hopes up is good advice
Do not let them rise.
 
Keep a stick next to you
To beat them down with
 
As knobbly as you can find.
 
Strike hard
As soon as their smooth heads
Edge above the day’s horizon.
 
Do not have pity on the small ones.
Mercy will only capsize you into despair.
 
Bash each one, remorselessly.
The instant it appears.
 
It’s the only way
To be calm in the daylight
And the twilight
 
To sit in your chair, and watch the sun
Pull shadows across the sidewalk,
 
Listen to the wind talking to the grass,
And feel your heart continue,
Steady, below the bone.

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Patricia Russo's poems have appeared or upcoming at One Art, Acropolis Journal, and The Sunlight Press.