M. Brooke Wiese

The Cigarette Boat
 
Once, lying poolside on sun-warmed boards,
sated and drowsing, I listened to the bray
of herring gulls overhead, and songbirds
in the bulrush at the edges of the bay,

and saltmarsh sparrows in the cordgrass at play
among the saltmarsh mallow.  A tern crashed
through the water’s surface, throwing spray
before emerging, mid-swallow; minnows thrashed

to get away from the bombardier – they flashed
in the turbid wavelets like silver crowns.
In the pool, a laughing gull splashed
and preened, mistaking me for background.

Then a speedboat roared across the bay,
waking me and chasing the gull away.

M. Brooke Wiese’s work has appeared most recently in Bronze Bird Books anthologies, The Road Not Taken, Sparks of Calliope, Voices and Visions Journal, The Chained Muse, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Her second chapbook, Memento Mori, is now available from Finishing Line Press, and a third is due out soon from Bottlecap Press.  After a very long hiatus she has been writing furiously again. Brooke lives with her wife and sons in New York City and currently teaches at a special education inclusion school in Manhattan to high school students of all abilities. www.mbrookewiese.net