A Cincinnati Boil
Black River
Blue Ridge Talk
Church Camp
From the Airplane, From the Water Tower
Icarus
Light Years
Murder in the Red Barn
Nautical Tattoo
Notes from a Slowly Dying Suburbanite
One Wench in the House between Them
The Final Viking Voyage
The Ghost of Chendu
The Radio Men
To Bukowski, #43
Wakulla Springs
What
Zunguka
Nautical Tattoo
Laura McCullough
He tells me a turtle once meant a sailor had passed
the equator; a dragon or swallow or map of China meant he flew
five thousand miles, and two
was double. A man in trouble might have a beating held off
by a praying Jesus on his back. If he’d been to Cape Horn, then stars
on his ear lobes; a nautical star,
five pointed and dark, meant to be a psychic light
that would guide the sailor home when lost. Some with angel wings.
A red one and a green one
on the chest was a warning, said, I am best, give way.
Who can wear a thing like this today, I ask, my bare arm against
the rest, his pen poised. Narrative
has given way, he says, but each of us is still the star
in the center of our own universe. My fingers clutch; the muscles
in my forearm tense; I’m posing
and know it. Once a student said I needed a tattoo
for the experience of pain. That’s a country we’ve all been to
I’d said, even then floundering.
What right had I earned to respond that way?
As if I could speak the same language as him, as if
I knew my own way home.
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the equator; a dragon or swallow or map of China meant he flew
five thousand miles, and two
was double. A man in trouble might have a beating held off
by a praying Jesus on his back. If he’d been to Cape Horn, then stars
on his ear lobes; a nautical star,
five pointed and dark, meant to be a psychic light
that would guide the sailor home when lost. Some with angel wings.
A red one and a green one
on the chest was a warning, said, I am best, give way.
Who can wear a thing like this today, I ask, my bare arm against
the rest, his pen poised. Narrative
has given way, he says, but each of us is still the star
in the center of our own universe. My fingers clutch; the muscles
in my forearm tense; I’m posing
and know it. Once a student said I needed a tattoo
for the experience of pain. That’s a country we’ve all been to
I’d said, even then floundering.
What right had I earned to respond that way?
As if I could speak the same language as him, as if
I knew my own way home.