Perilous
The cause of Roman poet Ovid’s exile was “carmen et error”, a poem and a mistake.
each night unravels the work done during the day —
I’m nothing but the skin sloughed off dry skulls,
my jacket of dread tips on its horizontal axis,
matching plaids and stripes, digesting the rattle
of change like coins clinking through the bus token taker.
perhaps I could retrain as something practical—such
as an umbrella or an exceptionally short pencil.
I don’t speak treachery, but I can parse the voided
utterances of imminent danger, as life shrinks
around me in a downward draft like an exhalation of clouds.
give me this last test of fortitude; allow me one final
count before my desperation rallies the gnarly bonds of vulnerability.
Annette Gagliardi’s poetry has been featured online and in printed journals, newspapers and anthologies in Canada, England, Sweden and the USA. She has won numerous awards for her poetry and the PenCraft Book Award for Literary Excellence for her historical fiction, Ponderosa Pines: Days of the Deadwood Forest Fire.