Santa Fe Poetry Broadside: Penelope Stowell: Scrimshaw

Issue #24, December, 2001 : -- 1 -2 -3 -4 -5 -6 -7 -8 -9 -10

11 -12
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Penelope Stowell

Scrimshaw

Whales surf on wet sand the moonless nights
Riding out their tails like skateboards.

She was thirty-one years old with a heart like a folded clam
That time she saw the titans frolic
In the moonless night.

She was not believed and left Nantucket.

Many years later, lying in the arms of yet another drunk,
She wondered if it had been a dream after all.

She spit bile
And a fragment of whalebone came out.

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Issue #24, December, 2001 :
Santa Fe Poetry Broadside.