Sy Roth’s poem Lot’s Wife appeared here in January 2013.
Content to Circle
By Sy Roth
Incarceration in a watery globe,
her world circumscribed by interminable circles
starting where there is no end and
ending where there are no beginnings.
Navigator of endless glass walls, uncovering nothing,
discoverer of a stretch of perpetual waters,
her reef-white rocks, and algae-capturing mesh.
A world gyres from without.
Mideast fades into another Arab spring,
they rattle their nuclear sabers and face other fiscal cliffs.
A million tentative turns as she grows old
on her merry-go-round of tepid water.
No ah-has for this spindly, wire-legged tawpie
as she circumnavigates her convex world
where Brobdingnagians approach curiously to spy on her.
No time to brabble when she seems content to follow her circles.
her world circumscribed by interminable circles
starting where there is no end and
ending where there are no beginnings.
Navigator of endless glass walls, uncovering nothing,
discoverer of a stretch of perpetual waters,
her reef-white rocks, and algae-capturing mesh.
A world gyres from without.
Mideast fades into another Arab spring,
they rattle their nuclear sabers and face other fiscal cliffs.
A million tentative turns as she grows old
on her merry-go-round of tepid water.
No ah-has for this spindly, wire-legged tawpie
as she circumnavigates her convex world
where Brobdingnagians approach curiously to spy on her.
No time to brabble when she seems content to follow her circles.
