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Callaloo 23.4 (2000) 1308



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The Nile

Steven Cordova


My many beating hearts, the fish,
died when I became a body of blood.
Men and women then looked and looked at me
and choked, their reflections masked by gnats.
What difference if it was God or Pharaoh
who plagued us? I was a bystander caught. . . .
And the Sea of Reeds? She had no wish
to silence an army. I heard her storm and brood,
reproaching her depths. I sent the Sea
my condolences--birds, each beak a flask
I filled with drops of clear water. Arrow,
crossbow, cannon--shunning all that's wrought
I've fixed my eye on the nightly mesh
of stars or rain stirring earth to mud,
lovely mud. To constancy
I murmur, gurgle. The fish have returned, grown fat
on poison. But let me not speak again of sorrow.
I keep my course--a changeling, a struck heart.



Steven Cordova is a graduate of the University of Texas, Austin, and has poems published in Borderlands, Barrow Street, The James White Review, and The Journal. He now lives in New York City.

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