Arca de Noe, by Jessica Purdy

Arca de Noe, by Leonora Carrington (Mexico, b. UK). 1967.

Arca de Noé

My body is seasick with rot,
a few suns burn under my ribs
and bubble up to boil out my eyes.
I’m half a blown-out moon--
bone-brittle, cratered.

How strange to see
There’s a version of myself
over there behind the rock
bent double in selfish grief.
Is this what I get for thinking I could die?

The red deer are waiting
to climb aboard.
Where do they think I can take them,
when I’m so twisted in on myself,
my boards white as bone,
and my stern mocking me?

Who are these birds
that light on my other half,
and these cloud apparitions in the rain?

I dreamed of three brothers
throwing rocks off a rooftop.
The youngest had something to prove.
He threw too hard and as I watched,
he fell ten stories to the ground.

What have I done, bringing children
into everything?

Jessica Purdy
​
This poem first appeared in SurVision Magazine.

Jessica Purdy teaches Poetry Workshops at Southern New Hampshire University.  She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. In 2014 she was nominated by Flycatcher for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. She was a featured reader at the Abroad Writers’ Conference in Dublin, Ireland, 2015. Recently her poems have appeared in The Light Ekphrastic, The Wild Word, SurVision Magazine, Silver Birch Press "Beach and Pool Memories" Series, Local Nomad, Bluestem Magazine, The Telephone Game, The Tower Journal, The Cafe Review, Off the Coast, and The Foundling Review. Her chapbook, Learning the Names, was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press. Her book STARLAND was published in October 2017 with Nixes Mate Books.