Old Vessels. by ​Daniel Coyle

Mauretania, Full Speed Ahead, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums (Britain) 1907

Old Vessels

He courted you for months and brought you
to New York’s best houses. The notices 
were fair, I’m sure, but he craved a prize. 
Aboard Mauretania for the crossing, 
he probably left you in a deck chair overnight
while he sat at the bar plotting his next one. 

Now wedged in steerage in this leaky vessel 
of a shop, jilted and jacketless, his name 
tattooed to your  spine, you sell yourself 
for nickels and dimes. I thumb your leaves 
back to front to learn your recent history: 
a tryst with a casual reader who probably 
found you in a dump like this, wrote his name 
on your flyleaf, took you to the Caymans 
or the Keys, then dropped you here with just 
a postcard to mark the point he stopped. 

I am so sorry. My dear, you deserve better.
I watch the dim ones shuffle past, 
shuffle past. Only a few bright ones scan
the shelves for ones like you for what
we needed long ago and still need now--
a passage missing from our own accounts 
to turn us elsewhere inside out to another 
entirely while remaining remotely ourselves. 
After all, isn’t this why we read—so turning 
a page might connect us to the other?

We have all have been with others, 
been used, amused, and passed around. 
I open you slowly to your middle signature, 
press my nose to your yellow leaves, 
breathe in almonds and vanilla flowers, 
yes, recto-verso, repeat, yes, yes,
so bosky and feminine your scent, 
I think you were a Daphne once
and I am mad Apollo for you now.
Your aubergine cover trending mauve
suggests a Bordeaux tonight. Are you free? 
Of course. I’ll tip the steward as we debark. 

​Daniel Coyle

​Daniel Coyle recently retired from a career as a harmless drudge in the information industry. He lives in Washington DC. His poems have appeared in the Wallace Stevens Journal, Arkansas Review, Fortnightly Review, Blue Unicorn.