Dockside Pastoral
after William Carlos Williams and Nora Marks Dauenhauer
The old men who stand about
the filet table
slice each belly
without looking down
and each cut
is more confident than
that of a CEO
commanding layoffs
with a keystroke.
Meanwhile
the bald eagles
perch patiently
in the cedars
awaiting
the entrails
that sustain them
and their young.
Those who are wise
say the whole world
is just cycling
between death and
death, yet these brief
years in the eye
of the hurricane
taste sweet as fresh roe!
The old men who stand about
the filet table
slice each belly
without looking down
and each cut
is more confident than
that of a CEO
commanding layoffs
with a keystroke.
Meanwhile
the bald eagles
perch patiently
in the cedars
awaiting
the entrails
that sustain them
and their young.
Those who are wise
say the whole world
is just cycling
between death and
death, yet these brief
years in the eye
of the hurricane
taste sweet as fresh roe!
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Frances KleinFrances Klein (she/her) is an Alaskan poet and teacher. She is the 2022 winner of the Robert Golden Poetry Prize. Klein is the author of the poetry chapbooks New and Permanent (Blanket Seat Press, 2022), The Best Secret (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and (Text) Messages from The Angel Gabriel (Gnashing Teeth Press, 2024). Her full length collection I Have Never Wanted Another Life is forthcoming from Riot in Your Throat Press in 2025. Klein’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best Microfictions, The Harvard Advocate, The Atticus Review, HAD, and others.
Instagram, Twitter, Bluesky // @fklein907 |