Best Friends
Call me what you will.
Fickle, for instance. I
simply haul in my net
roll up my sails
drop anchor and sling
my ropes on solid land
while frenzied water ebbs
and flows behind me.
Or dull and lackluster.
That’s when I take
the salt and acrid lemon
of your words and rub
the tarnish from
my copper pans
until they gleam.
Call me shallow.
And I reach down
from the submarine depths
of my limitations
and build an arc
shooting past the clouds
through an expanse
that even the orbs
of your eyes
can scarcely fathom
without squinting.
Call me what you will. I
turn your insults into gold.
It’s an amazing thing, this
strange alchemy
between us.
Reckoning
Crystals of ice-flakes. Squalls approach.
The cold-frost numbs my fingers.
Steam escapes the kettle-lid
etching steel-point vines upon the doors.
Crack of dusk. Vapored breath.
Contraction of the stone-like flesh.
My skin retracts as larch-pins snap
from northern gusts of spiking winds.
And what is left of mossy leaves
rank sodden with decay
I pile into a nameless heap
a mound where hardened insects play.
In the Indian Summer of my days
what thoughts of Winter’s Darkness call —
I have been summoned to reflect
that in my youth, my soul grows old.
E. C. Traganas is the author of the acclaimed debut novel Twelfth House. She has published in Möbius, Ibbetson Street Press, The Penwood Review, Sacred Journey, and numerous other literary journals. Shaded Pergola, a book of short poems featuring her original illustrations, is set to be released in January.
Sparks of Calliope 