PROSE POETRY
BETH GORDON
HYDROLOGY II
Every morning you drink coffee from a mug painted with a river & I am always astonished by the way you mix teacups & fireproof boxes into still life. For years I’ve lived inside steel-winged flying machines & gilt-edged airport bars, my people the grounded people looking for new ways to drown. The last bartender I saw was pregnant, her bouquet of belly a small, miraculous moon in a world where the best thing someone could offer me is a double shot of whiskey or beer at 7:30 a.m. I’m not saying I’m sorry that I lived that way. I’m saying that four months later her daughter is three months old & I wonder if you ever loved someone as much as I loved the way she sliced a new lemon for me & called me sweetheart while her baby kicked against the tide.
Beth Gordon is a poet, mother and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. She is the author of two chapbooks: Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe (Animal Heart Press) and Particularly Dangerous Situation (Clare Songbird Publishing). She is Managing Editor of Feral, Assistant Editor of Animal Heart Press and Poetry Editor of Gone Lawn.
