the bucket kid kicked me over
should her, shoulder her into a great big ditch
across from the patches of clover
where my sisters played strange marble games…
the water black and Baltic looking, smelled
like a seaweed…salt in my nostrils I choked
wrapping myself tighter in the murk
it was cold and strange, dead frogs floating
near my ankles?…couldn’t tell, but the movement
it was constant and heavy, green and oily
tangled and cavernous was the open mouths
algaeic slushwords drifting darkly by like
drowned Apennine minstrel ghosts…
there might have been music, couldna heard
the block in my ears was like holding
a cork over a wine bottle all shook up
*the wine being only halfway blended, mixing
berries and memories of grapeseeds together
in alcoves of flushed reveries*
and I could swear I saw bucket kid over the edge,
Wide-eyed and wondering, danger in her breathing?
because I can’t swim and the clothes were seamed
in asphyxiating gags stillness I stared up through
the ripplewaves, slow as they were and getting
further every time my foot kicked a dead frog,
cold and strange they felt, so oily and thick!
pretty soon I was heavy and constant too
like the berrie skins in the wine bottle
like the silt sinks, turns to foam
on the shore of lone viscous pregnant beaches…
down in the bog, the kid turned and ran
he hid his bucket underneath his parent’s alcove
*which is more like a hollow for guests in summer,
bedchamber and all made up with a flora print*
where they stay each night drinkin wine
like it was the Sabbath, not a worry
Bucket kid went made toast hot with jam
And margarine, tottered up to his slight room
Above the mudroom, overlookin the bay
Which was right across from the clover
My sisters played their stranger marble games
And their sister looking up
settled under that heavy green water…
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Submission Name: Girl in the Bogs
