national poetry month, day 13.

I came across this poem on a literary blog a couple of weeks ago. I love it.

High and Bright and Fine and Ice
by Darcie Dennigan

When the motorboat man asked me to love him

I whispered precipice
the word for the no-more-boyfriend feeling

because precipice contains ice (practically twice)
because I wanted teetering--

What? he said
Yes

His ears from the engines--so hard of hearing--his hands always so hot

Mid our first winter--I'd clung so long to the dock
he had to crowbar my fingers off

Each digit cracked so cleanly
Would you say they break like icicles? I asked sweetly.

I knew I was nothing! But if I could sustain one song--
I is, I is, I is I is I is

I could be: ice

Sex on the bathroom's cold marble counter was best
I whispered statuette, monument

What? he, sculpting my legs, said

Yes

The child? I named her Cecily
It sounded like iced lily

For pure, I said pristine
At the ocean, I said brine

Isle for vacation; for flowers, edelweiss

But when I said (only of late, late!) I choose ice
Brittle pearls broke behind my syllables

Did he hear me?
Again, twice, thrice:

For my love
we would need to live
in a great pyramid
We would need to sleep
beneath the continental shelf
with Antarctic crust blanketing us
The only driveway to any kind of house
is an iceberg-ridden Northwest Passage
When I whispered universe
you were to translate it as
one bright line
one bright rime