Blackbirdan online journal of literature and the artsSpring 2011 v10n1
poetryfictionnonfictiongalleryfeaturesbrowse
print version
NORMAN DUBIE

At the Tomb of Naiads

Deep in the woods, a small horse
with ice
like black tackle in its gray mane
eats the fresh snow.

Two white keys
on a piano are struck at once
and the horse lifts above the trees.

The stars are signaling to me.

I am so sick
of the miraculous creatures
settling in their red beds of floss.

There’s the unfiltered Pall Mall
Eisenhower would have put
in the mouth
of a dying gunnery sergeant
who smiles
there in the snow
with a big orange moon sitting
in the pines.

He coughs. And that crazed shit Hitler
is dead. I am born
somewhat egocentric
with my mother’s blood on my shoulders. Now

Hiroshima beads up
in the white slick on my small stomach.
Everyone grows shy
for a quarter of a century. They eat pie—

the aliens are arriving
in silent silver cigar cases
to observe the mass extinctions.

I was born in candlelight
in a late winter thunderstorm.
I begin to eat snow. More ships
leaving the Pleiades
to visit our Equator.

And furthermore
several nuclear wars
have been averted
like the eyes of the Naiads
eating the snow that the dogs have yellowed. . . .  end


return to top