We sculled awkwardly, getting nowhere
but in the way of other skiffs
cutting the sheen with circled limbs
that flashed on wakes like cooling glass.
The water was green, thick with life
and the decay that swam with it,
sucking at roots, leaving tilted elms
gripping the bank with slick black knuckles.
A swan floated past like a cake of carved ice,
its soapy whiteness sluicing the scum.
Bloody yanks, the natives said. I remember
sun singeing the base of my neck,
the heavy oar heaving its resentment.
Already we had visited the church,
bought five-pound rubbings of its brass curse,
gone away again unsure
of our own feet on the hollow stones.
Our rebuilt, salvaged, love-warped pasts.
I pulled a white feather from the water's skin
where it spun on the murk like an ivory dial.
Its pale rib-filaments dried in my fist,
smelling, very faintly, of something rotten.
Jacqueline West's work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals including Pebble Lake Review, Briar Cliff Review, flashquake, Barnwood, The Pedestal Magazine, St. Ann's Review, Chizine, and The Rose and Thorn. A chapbook of her work is forthcoming from Parallel Press, and she has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. For more of Jacqueline's work, visit www.jacquelinewest.net.