Current
Issue
Volume 12.1
Pat Hale
—
Bird, Fish, Snake
after Max Ernst
Sometimes
you find yourself wanting to walk on water
but you’re caught in a boat and the lakebed is dry.
Sometimes even fish take to the sky
while your arms remain
unfeathered.
Fish or flesh, day or night,
the blue shirt or the brown one.
Maybe the red.
I was like that once –
possessed of two heads,
my world so full of options,
none of which fit. I thought if I could just
fix my clothes and choose a direction,
everything would be easier.
But words flew out of my mouth,
birds refusing recall,
those sharp and jagged wings.
And my tail --
a snake so long,
I was sure it was poisonous.
Pat Hale’s publications include “Dry Lightning” (Kelsay Books, 2025), “Seeing Them with My Eyes Closed” (Grayson Books, 2015), and “Composition and Flight” (the Hill-Stead Museum, 2011). Her prize-winning poems appear in CALYX, Naugatuck River Review, Third Wednesday and other journals, and have been anthologized in “Forgotten Women,” “Waking Up to the Earth: Connecticut Poets in a Time of Global Climate Crisis,” and elsewhere. Currently working on a collection of poems celebrating her short career as a Bollywood movie extra, she now lives in Connecticut, where she serves on the board of directors for the Riverwood Poetry Series, and is an associate editor of Connecticut River Review.
