RANEE ZAPORSKI
Slightly Drunk and Thinking About Whales Again
I know when I come across myself in a bar—
elbows leaning toward a glass of lost love
listening to the roar in my head
sipping the far off liquid sea. I adjust
the coaster with my finger and thumb
as somewhere seaweed entwines
between my pointed fins. People rush by
on land, proof that the human race
is just a race, each wave a repetition
of the clicks and pulses
of the soul’s echo, our afterlife
framed within the wide embrace
of white whale bones
as required boredom kills slowly
or suddenly. I travel only
to pretend I’m something else
in a liminal space to feel
the eternal potential
of sight reporting beauty
opposing landscapes standing close
to one another, each wave
and each reef echoing
with the sonorous last call—
Snow Queen
The Snow Queen swiftly steals away
a frozen white glittering scepter, waving over
clouds of fear preserved in the ether of smoke
perched lofty in her glacier chariot creating
every pulse, every breath as I discovered
your electrical death. How the power of ice
kept only the memory of heat inside
when blankets danced over doorways, the current traveling invisibly
like a crystallized, poisonous snake, the cloud of fear preserved
in the electrical wires from the road trapped beneath. Visions of blood
in every breath. From snow blindness
to the animal’s white bones cracking, time has transformed your face—
into kisses that freeze,
love that separates.