Thirdness / Origin Story
Choice C is always the answer
if you ask me to choose between
A or B— for me there is no “or”—
there is always a slippery
“and” / which is not the same as
neither/both. If you ask me
to choose between I will answer “fish”
but not to the question “fish or fowl”
because “fish” is the answer to “boy
or girl”—
we all started out by
swimming. If you ask me “princess
or knight” I’ll
say I want to be the stuffed dinosaur
because when we play Castle
there should be a dinosaur. So many
costumes the tall ones make us choose
between from the time we are born.
Pardon me—
I am too busy swimming
to put on pants or dresses.
See my scales shimmer in the sunlight
let my phosphorescence shock you
my water-flame my
dark-shine my scorchflood—
--for Hope
Incidental
(Chemo Round Three)
“I’ve got nothing left/ it’s kind of wonderful / ‘cause there’s nothing they can take away…”
--Broken Bells / Perfect World
The industrial part of town
has never looked more beautiful—
the cement factory proof
that bodies are miracles of
physics, engineering—
My face is raining
because the steering wheel fits—
because I can hold it
today— because there is today—
because my hands are working—
my knees bend and permit
me to accelerate, brake
save my life.
Down come the gates between
me & the oncoming train—
thank you, city engineers, for this
kindness. Our trajectories
now coexist without incident—
Incidence. What are the chances
of me? I am breathing
two days after wondering whether I would
continue to do that— I’m swallowing
food. I want to wave to
the people on the passing train—
do they know how beautiful
this day is? Do they know
their knees are fulcrums
and levers?
My heart is still beating.
There was such pain
such unbearable fire
I wondered whether it was better
to be permanently
Elsewhere.
And then the cool night—
there was Mercy—
Reprieve is a beautiful word.
Today everything is beautiful
(which does not diminish the beauty
of any individual incidence)—
A seed caught in the fur
of an unsuspecting animal
and transported elsewhere—
the tree that grows is
not intentional— not on purpose—
yet it grows
with intent— such am I—
I am unlikely
and yet
here I am,
sobbing in my car
as a train full of Beauty
speeds past—
Frankie Drayus has recent work in Poemeleon, and past poems and short-shorts in Passager (Honorable Mention), Permafrost, Poet Lore, Barrow Street, Ninth Letter, Third Coast, diode, ART/LIFE (including her collage art), and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series, Walt Whitman Award, May Swenson Poetry Prize, and Marsh Hawk Press. She is a past co-director of the poetry nonprofit VCP, a multiyear co-curator of THE THIRD AREA, and a recent survivor of breast cancer.
Guest Editor Hyejung Kook’s poems have appeared in POETRY Magazine, Denver Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Pleiades, and elsewhere. Other works include an essay in Critical Flame and a chamber opera libretto. Born in Seoul, Korea, she now lives in Kansas with her husband and their two children. Learn more at her website.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 