THE SONGS WE MAKE UP
We were stranded in the dark like atrial fibrillation.
Like the skull of a dogfish crawling along
the bedroom floor under the bed, a centipede
with a cape trailing tears and dust. Nothing’s
going in or out of O’Hare in fog this thick.
She handed me lines she’d scrawled on
the flyleaf of Navigable Rivers. I was still unfolding
the map. It was the worst flood in 59 years.
Even the dogfish was dreaming of growing
legs, tossed back on the bank by a great blue heron.
I’d lost 9 pounds in two weeks. We paddled
our canoe past the train station. The sky was a pin
cushion. I couldn’t breathe. There were pines
leaning over the water. She’d torn our plane tickets
into confetti, a casket resting beside a boathouse.
Cigarettes had stressed my alveoli. The fish used
its pectorals to crawl away under the watchful gaze
of the panting heron. I’ve seen them swallow
ten-pound carp whole. After three months her
jeans hung on her body like a pair of pants
on a hook, vitamin D streaming out through her
eyes. I asked her to share her dreams. She rolled up
her sleeves with her long fingers. It’s my turn to
evolve, the dogfish repeated ayuadame ayuadame.
It was crawling uphill using its pectoral fins like stilts,
like elbows. The heron had no interest in doubling
its weight that evening, I’d spent much of the
weekend in the gazebo eating the blueberries
I’d crushed into a paste for the sugar high.
The river sloshed all around me. When the red fox
came by we both watched a butterfly. I mistook
it for an airplane on fire. It was a Question
Mark. It landed on the path of slime the dogfish
had left on the grass on its way back to the river
after the heron had wandered off, bored. The fish sank
into the muddy river, hopeful for better days. We
paddled the canoe out toward the purple sunset. That
night I watched the condensation on my windows
evaporate like the muttering I heard from that dogfish
as it labored uphill que sientes que sientas que sientes.
David Dodd Lee is the author of ten full-length books of poems & a chapbook, including Animalities (Four Way Books, 2014), & And Other’s, Vaguer Presences (BlazeVox, 2018). He has published fiction and poetry in many literary magazines including The Nation, Copper Nickel, New World Writing, Willow Springs, and Pleiades, and is currently making final edits on Flood, a novel. Lee is Editor-in-Chief of 42 Miles Press.