All the sea life left of her
was uterus.
And then one day
her boy pushed through
and rose through the pale blue bay
wrapped in a morning curl.
There is no evasion ever.
The body is a kind of gun
betrothed to what the hands do.
The comber hung his head,
poking at the froth-spot.
Throwback foal,
naked dowry
of the wind’s long neck.
Larissa Szporluk is the author of five books of poetry, most recently, Traffic with Macbeth, published by Tupelo Press in 2011. An associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Bowling Green State University, she has received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.