Colin Pope’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2012, Slate, The New York Quarterly, Texas Review, and The Los Angeles Review, among others. He was the 2011-12 Clark Writer-in-Residence at Texas State University, where he teaches in the English Department. He is currently poetry editor at Southwestern American Literature and lives in San Marcos, Texas with his dog, Jelly.---------
Big Death
for Jennifer Wrisley, 1980-2010
Everyone has grown accustomed
to the one hour of sunlight
your death allows us per day.
Nobody talks about it,
not even when new generations, children,
develop genetic abnormalities:
their skin grows carnation pink,
they are sometimes born
like little wolves, covered
in a fine fur that turns coarse and grey.
Their parents weep and hold them
in the dark. And in the latest war,
Argentina was annexed by Alaska
after a complicated treaty
essentially promising that no one would care
if the entire population
migrated between two poles,
caught in shadow for months on end and
cannibalizing the stupid along the way.
It’s part of our new religion
in which nothing means anything
except escaping the night without screaming
as we eat each other alive.
Performing Reassignment Surgery on the Mermaid You Love
It couldn’t work any other way. Or what—
take the convexes and concaves
of the torso, the kissable fruit of the head
and replace them with fish parts?
When you love someone
you don’t make them another species.
Not altogether. Better
to grow them on two stalks
and watch their wobbly evolution
out of the ocean. Better to make them
what you want. And every once in a while
fill up the bathtub with saltwater
and hug until nobody can cry anymore.
“To enrich your life”
is the reason Steve tells me
we need to go see the latest theatrical abomination
as if my life’s not rich enough,
as though the miniature treasure chest
under my ribcage is almost empty.
What he doesn’t know
is I sit up nights, by inkwell and candlelight,
counting the miserly fortune
of my regrets like God
budgeting the stars. And a few lovely comets
flouncing across a stage,
some sparkling banter, a musical number
can’t compare to the grotesque
little putto who sits on my shoulder,
covered in ooze, blood dripping
from the raspberry of its nose.
The good news is you’re ugly enough
you won’t have to worry about love again, it says
as I whack it a few more times
and a flurry of gold coins
sprays from the wounds like a celebration.