Callisto's Flowers, via Dead Horse Bay

 
 

 

Pink wind, cold sun. In this quiet light,

you watch her roam the bay. You produce

a solitary prayer—bodega rose, talisman.

 

She walks along the bones, ghosts of horses

etched on the frozen sand.

Imagine, you whisper, a coast

 

filled with yearning birds and her hair.

Wielding her limbs like loosed carnations

as you observe: the flowers drop along the shoreline.

 

When you retreat homeward, you affirm:

there is nothing in this life you want more

than to please yourself, and at night—sub rosa

 

you remove pieces of glass from a lonely jar,

placing them into the auric constellations

you’d like to turn her into

 

Object

Red Rose and Carnations


Body of Water

Dead Horse Bay


About the Artist

Mary Catherine Kinniburgh is a doctoral student at the City University of New York Graduate Center, where she studies medieval mysticism and imaginative landscapes. When she’s buried deep in the library, she writes poems too. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and four rescue cats.