Chris McCreary

RIME MAR

Pull down the coins from the sky & there’ll be no constellations left to guide you. Even then, even now, how we glide, gladdened in the never knowing we’ve forgotten our mission, nothing but orphans adrift on little more than a raft far from shore.

A better Orpheus might’ve stuck to the script, might’ve lashed himself to the mast when he recognized his own shaky hand in the message jammed into the bottle drifting past. But he’s not quite the right narcissist, too enthralled removing the splinter from his own calloused paw.

Even so, even still, he checks to be sure his neck is attached. If this Orpheus became fable instead of myth, he’d be the scorpion who stung himself for an extra mouthful of grapes. Beneath the murk, the dim sense we’ve bent to drink from the wrong river. Even then, once again, an ancient pacing along the shoreline, the captain’s tongue working wax from our corked ears.

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Chris McCreary is the author of four books of poems as well as the chapbook AmoUng (Shirt Pocket Press 2019) and, along with Mark Lamoureux, Maris McLamoureary's Dictionnaire Infernal (Empty Set Press 2017). He lives in South Philadelphia with Frida the cat. You can find him on Instagram at @chris___mccreary.