You were built up slow,
block on blunt block,
shoulders set so wide
and high, you could last
forever. You are concrete
and you are skin.
You are the rim
of the reservoir,
counterfeit with calm.
Your rounded back, holding.
Holding back
the furious surge
seeping soft and wet
on your downstream face.
Fish fail and birds
depart the parapet’s
curve, calculated
to embrace
your other side, starved
of what it needs
to be a river.
And if you fail,
would the shuddering rush
shatter everything in its sway?
Pray for the breach,
anyway.
Kathleen Loe is a poet and multi-media artist, living in Hudson, NY. Her poetry has been published in Sugar House Review with a Pushcart Prize Nomination, Rise Up Review, and Cagibi. In addition to poetry, she writes critical essays for artist exhibitions and served as editor and contributing author for Alchemy of Light, Mary Conover published by Whale and Star Press. She has taught poetry with the Writers Studio in Hudson and studio art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois Wesleyan University and Bloomfield College.
Appears In
Cagibi Issue 12
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