National Poetry Month: Fordham Poem of the Day

I Would Have Told Calypso Something Like (by Sarah Grimm)

long oars are plunged into mud and barnacles scale them. Those things like fossils are living, and so am I. My stasis, too, is as hard as bone and curl footed. At night, I dream of long oars separating the seas.

I would have found her in the grotto and said,

cleave to the long-oared ships, for they are anchored and crusted over. Their embrace, though wooden, is wider than my own.

The olive tree is a hard kind of home and some days I wake with oil in my ears. For hours, sounds come to me as if from underwater and I am dizzy with hunger for a place far from here.

(Sarah Grimm is Masters candidate in English with a concentration in creative writing.)