Missives of Appropriation and Error I.-IV.
By Mg Roberts


I.

Dear Child,

There are things. Like history. Steeping in a press
pot. That I do not yet know. Hot tea. Water boiling
and settling. Jasmine. Born grammatically. We are
dinosaurs. Formed and blurred. Beyond shape.



II.

Dear Dinosaurs,

The errors of how things can change. Extinction.
Pulls away. I am unlike myself. A gerund. Possessed
by the need to accumulate. Sailing ships. I imagine
history. Submerged in my throat. Have I told you?
There are things I have yet to translate. Missing
you.



III.

Dear Submerged,


Coins in a piggy-bank. Floating. Coconut palms.
Bitter on the tongue. Sometimes acidic. Stained
throughout. There is a language that I know longer
know. Fresh off the. I imagine darkness. Whining.
So here we are. Blanketed by stars. How easily we
forget. The boat.



IV.

Dear Piggy-bank,

Copper. Orange fire. Heat accumulating. Absolving
nothing. Sometimes silver.
In between cracked fingers. Up and out. A beat.
Heard as tears. Monsoons arrive.
And forgetting. Settles.

Mg Roberts was born in Subic Bay, Philippines. Currently, she teaches in the San Francisco Bay area. She is an MFA graduate of New College of California, where strange tricks were added to her bag. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Five Fingers Review, How2, Wordriot, horse less review, and 13:after. If she weren’t a poet she would be a snake handler, or maybe just a good speller.

© 2007 prickofthespindle.com