Marjorie Power

–after rereading “Saying Your Name Three Times
Underwater” by Sam Roxas-Chua

If, After the Collapse

of Africa’s last elephant, I get to keep going, and keep a book,
I’ll choose this one. Sun and turquoise ocean on the front,

‌        undertow hard at work in the text. Here, a minnow
‌        manages to flick its silver, glide and turn and flick.

When ocean overcomes the city of my birth, flinging fish
and trash and garish hues into rush hour traffic – if I get

to revisit all those languages and shouts – I’ll stand by a walk light
on my good foot and crutch and read my one book aloud.

This ancient Chinese oracle whose author’s
from the future, born on a planet yet to solidify.

‌       Saint Patrick powered the snakes out of Ireland
‌       even though snakes weren’t known there.

Come and hear – you’ll leave prepared to draw them home, alive.

Marjorie Power‘s newest poetry collection is Sufficient Emptiness, Deerbrook Editions, 2021. A chapbook, Refuses to Suffocate, appeared in 2019 from Blue Lyra Press. Publications which have taken her work recently include Barrow Street, Commonweal and Southern Poetry Review. She lives in Rochester, N.Y. near family, after many years in various western states.