Reading the Bones from Lake Okeechobee
- Reading the Bones from Lake Okeechobee
Fishing boats are tiedto a dockwater hasn't touchedin years. Lobotomized
in the dirt signaturesof the lake, the boats bakein the sun like clay potssealed with zigzagsof white paint on ocher.
An albino pythoncoils in the shadeof a styrofoamcooler still wedgedat the baseof the green air boat.
The water has been siphonedlike smoke through a straw—a dark panther crossesthe river swallowedin the saw grassthat's brittleas crappie ribscombing the sky.
Under this shallow lakethe limestone bed seepswith salt water,turning the cypressesblack as the box turtle'sshell. A brainmapped with pesticide.
The panther runs intothe mangrove treesas a Tomahawk jethowls the sky in its whitenimbus, caulkingthe borders of the cloudslike bullets in the hemof bandoliers. [End Page 66]
The pottery is open—the mouth of an infanton a warm bottle.Through the mud cracksthey rise,caught in the limboof their new homepeddled by the black feetof the sea's return. [End Page 67]
John-Michael Bloomquist is a fifth-generation Arizonan. His poems have been published in The Carolina Quarterly, The Southeast Review, The South Dakota Review, The Portland Review, and The Superstition Review, and his work is forthcoming in Third Coast and The Lindenwood Review. He won second prize in the Glendon Swarthout poetry competition in 2010 and first prize in 2011. He is an MFA candidate in Poetry at Arizona State University.
