Pier Song

You find me repulsive—but you’re back.
Your kind of love follows at a distance—

walks like a stranger to the shuttered red
roundhouse at the end of me. You sit

quietly on a plastic chair, touch
my face where no one can see. No

promises dear, but don’t be afraid.
There’s room for you there at the end of the rail,

the three flags kicking.
                                                   Because

where else can the smallest part of you go
when the mean work is done? Because

if you cut off your ears, let it be for love.
Everyone comes to me eventually,

staring hard at the plaster sun.
Like you, singing about the power of doing things over.

Say the palms flower my walk street perfect green
& my fish flash a dress of sequins & smoke,

gather & whisper,
                                                   there are no fish.

-Published in Barn Owl Review

A Season of Snow

Shock was pale
                        & scoured, like an alabaster jar.
Sick
            a remote blue sky.
Hot
            like the night moon, telescoped behind fog.


It was Gretel’s forest at the time of the kill.

            The crackle of wings into flight. Silence
in measured beats.
                         The press of air on all sides.
Departure.                                            The sky.


But it was also perspective:
A ferned tree against flat mountains.
A shaman’s drug.
                                      & visions: coyote
with one red eye, one green,
                                                  stopped silent in the valley


where we hold hands, tiny
& featureless under a domed pewter sky. We sip
single-malt scotch from a shared leather flask.
The moon sprinkles Easter-sugar over our snowshoes.

Do we step lightly

over the many small deaths of winter, beloved?
Over the absolution—

-Published in The Laurel Review

The Final Interview

Of course, we’re interested.
I wanna be an archetype.
A glamorously flawed fabulon.

We don’t hear that much, anymore.
Most of the time, it’s the comic books.
The same old red cape

and his dame in striped silk.
But you need a grudge match
to love the hero. A nadir, a new

low. Give me an anti-hero
and the series can run forever.
That’s why we’re so pleased

you’re captivated with the next
great fall. We’re agog.
All fingers and toes on the glass.

But the contract states, and I quote:
Picture your face in a fairground cutout,
wearing a chartreuse satin sheath.

I’m afraid you don’t get to choose.
Fate will find you, will or no—
lime green doesn’t suit

everyone, but you’ll carry it off.
Virtue has its own reward,
but no box office. So says

Mae West. So let’s try this again,
con gusto. Maybe a Greco-Roman
mosaic, a god story on a stone-chip

floor. From the door, it’s a spitting image.
Trust me. I have Circe’s eyes in a jar.
We’ve been listening for someone like you.

-Forthcoming in CRATE

© 2008 Stephany Prodromides