Swimming to Alcatraz
a shivering cage of ribs
Swimming to Alcatraz
My uncle paid his sons two dollars for every coyote ear they brought home. Clean cuts only. Tips and halves thrown off the porch as rat food while silvers and large ones were trophied on the wood-paneled walls of the den. For years, I searched the woods for earless coyotes. Never saw one. So when that lone paddler landed, a shivering cage of ribs on the wet rocks of Alcatraz, I didn't wonder the motivation. I thought about sundial mottos —both sanguine and salty— the packs of people who would rather live on Mars, and that single coyote's future on the island, stalking mice in succulent gardens, marking former prison walls, reclaiming the penitence we abandoned in our fogged-up cells. As if swimming to the next rock over could save him. As if it could save us.
Thank you to RockPaperPoem for giving this poem a home in their latest Issue #14, and to the talented, insightful and generous writers of CWC led by the amazing Maya C. Popa for reading and responding to first versions.
{| AC