Two Poems

Joan Stepp Smith

Foundlings

When they meet, he wants to talk about the sandwiches.

Too soft? He says.

The second day, she plays dumb
sore elbows trump the exactitude of the virginal,
until sullen arrives lonesome as a crush of blue bar flies
inclined to rescue the lush snake meat wriggling on the fable:

The scene? A verminesque.
Too raw? He asks. Too bitter?

Of course, compared to a good cutlet [or kidlet
           force fed ugly food].

[Snake, snake, snake. Oh, well, cuisine isn't the issue.]

Better go look what they found in the sea today,
braided into the tail of the sapphire sea,
a bit sideways and south of Sardinia she is the last of the three
ships sunk overstuffed, they say. Downed by the waterlogged
          and innumerable digits of Doges,
zillions of pinkies like monster gnocchis destined to float
to the surface. Yes, followed by the bones, the luminous knucklets
after the flimsy flesh goes to the gulls, shiny as opals,
bobbing now for centuries on the waves—silly pinkie rings
still on the bottom, still, and dazzling, and, still, so lost

***

Wall Sonnet

Kittens carry shovels, a smashed apple on the grass
Three perfect snake teeth, a fake fingernail sticking out it
Livid [Yes, really, in the reddest sense]—No wonder you won't ask
To order the pure white rabbit for their delicate noses split,
From squatting on their fluffy haunches you felt expressed
Imprisonment[correct?] like a man half garrotted as a gift
Might invest in a vixen's neck soothing its pinched distress
[Sweetly, to his credit] to defy unknowns embedded in the myth
At the foot of my bed where the Weimaraner slept
Making her sad shape (Ah, yes, later memorialized) in my walls
Thursday card nights when the unclothed come to collect
Goat muzzles, green jewels still Jujubes before a shadow calls

Pomegranates to hawk seeds as loaded Aces:
Panthers— Prayers—Weasels in the hole eating claws for solace.

Joan Stepp Smith is a native San Franciscan. She divides her time between California and Montana writing and working with performance horses. Her latest book of poems, In a Pasture With Palominos, will be released this year.

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