Incident at Port, and: Leaping for the Imaginary Fly

26 the minnesota review Carol Potter Incident at Port It was the year the Assumptions were called up. Nina, Maria, Pinta; I think those were their names. We watched them slumber into port, their masts at half-keel, their silk sails luffing. They were reported to have mal-functions in their mid-sections, inconsistencies in their ship logs. Women, riding seven-headed beasts were leaning from the bows with red skirts hitched up over their thighs. It was said that these women had been giving themselves away for free; it was said that these women had an inclination towards self-destruction. The crowd was laughing, a large balloon rose from their midst. It was discovered that the Assumptions and their crews had a problem with their drive trains, the gears connecting wind with water. The harbor master believed there was nothing to worry about. The crowd stopped laughing and went home; while the women climbed down off the bows, fixed their skirts. The women began to make incantations. They sang songs that no one particularly wanted to hear. 27 potter Their voices eddied out, an unexpected keen past the lull. Around the ship, the colors were multitudinous. Leaping for the Imaginary Fly Like broken wires after a storm, the words hang, each puddle alive with promise. The favored things we danced around grew empty and rattled. Their notes scattered like ice across a frozen surface. People rock on public benches, their mouths silently sucking the past wedged in their cheeks like dull bones that shift from side to side. We thought the blood would make them speak. I wash the rag in a cold stream and watch the red swill across the plain. This water blossoms incandescent in our bellies, sounds repeat on a dead surface. From their towers, the new gods tell us there is nothing to be afraid of; they wave their dead over their heads and shout, "Believe!" A tin bell sounds. With good intention, the people cry, "Hallelujah!", and drink. How did we end here with this grey sound gumming the sky, the sickle-back singer saying it's just his job? I run down the road wondering where it went wrong. Rain pounds the tin cover. 28 the minnesota review Huddled in their houses, the armies babble: "I was just taking orders!" I take my place on the bench, shut my eyes, and in my dreams a dark mouth comes out of the sky, plucks those roofs and hurls them like hail across the desert; while the bare-headed troops sink to their knees, clap their hearts together and beg forgiveness. In this dream, a feathered sound sails across the hills, presses her lips to our mouths and promises a miracle to sprout inside the skull, golden light to shine from our tongues. Voices of crickets lost in a cold dream, ring in my ears. For these few hours with sun stroking their dark throats, they shake their legs loose and believe. I open my mouth to take the holy body rattling a brown pod in a cold wind. I am the fish leaping for the imaginary fly. My skull glows like a jack-o-lantern. My mouth opens and closes on a dry tongue. There is only the bare sound of my hand sweeping loose air and dogs barking that distant whoop whoop in an early evening dark. ...