SELF-PORTRAIT WITH UNUSUALLY
CONVINCING LOON CRY
It’s more like the long end of a sour date
or slipping from one radio station to another
on the glowing FM dial
than any reassuring call from home.
I avoid Minnesota in all seasons,
wear its circumference in reverse
like a skirt too tiny for the smallest girl.
Like dancing with an always angry clown,
an alcoholic bulb of nose,
I’m careful of its sudden bends.
Tornadoes might pile its cool soil
on top of me; a stray quake could
permanently inter me in its wintry
opulence. Migrating birds could deposit twigs
from its pine reams into
my car’s sunroof that doesn’t seal
completely. I am propelled
away as if by magnetic force or winter
storm. If the rivers flood,
I would wash away like blood
clotted at the mouths of cuts.
When the waters slalom past
the dikes in North Dakota,
I would watch Grand Forks
burning on TV underwater
and think of home,
a broken bell, loose smelt. Deep now
in Alabama’s angry spleen,
I hear the loon facsimile’s
an electronic call
tanning my apartment’s
excuse for air. This plush
bird, given as a gift,
emits a tone that like an old
country song, rings far away
and somehow comes back awful blue.
Ander MonsonSAVED
When lazy Lake Superior, unsatisfied
with the last bite of beach,
has turned its lapping gape
to our finely-furnished home,
When the kitchen sadly sags
out over the swells that ate
the microwave and all our frozen
treats, our maple table, correctly-set
with silverware whose blades
and tines will shine underwater
as they have ceased to here,
When we die from lack of love or sense
of Providence, our valiant televisions
wailing, lined screens finally found profound
by fish that bump their noses
on our faces and leave confused,
We will be still
above, halfway held
in the serene marine air,
on our parents beds, in borrowed
family cabins, in a state of final balance,
and, like the arms of the bored Lord,
who has kept His Hands
pushed out against the Sides
of doorframes for So Long
that they have gone Numb,
when freed, we will all be raised
up without intention.
Ander Monson
