Flat Water, and: Original Sleep
- Flat Water, and: Original Sleep
Flat Water
for my wife
The morning's all flat water and pancakes,a mosquitoless breeze and sunflowers in reliefbefore a Mediterranean-blue Gulf,its tar balls and salty weight thinnedas if it were popping eggs insteadof those August crabs, fatand fecund, chilled in the chestnext to the top of our wedding cake,a Blackened Voodoo and church key,spent ice bag floating in the swilllike pristine jellyfish in the shallowsthat wouldn't dare sting us today. [End Page 378]
Original Sleep
I was born brokento a body put to sleep
so I dream her dreamsof escape, my wonder repelled
at no longer being confinedI must have been held
I must have beenweighed in a pan
I must have been more awakethan I've ever been
O fluorescent lights!Wake that woman up!
Her stupor loweredlike netting
to receive a childbeating its wings
and buzzinga female expected not to bite [End Page 379]
martha serpas's poetry collections include Côte Blanche, The Dirty Side of the Storm, and The Diener. She coproduced Veins in the Gulf, a documentary about southern Louisiana's coastal erosion crisis. She teaches creative writing at the University of Houston and serves as a hospital trauma chaplain.
