Cate Peebles
No Wake
When the canoe prow rips
blanched cypress in half
white spruce branches
split and sink inside
through ripples where there
was no tree in the first place—
a silver skeleton deleted
from the creek’s code, numb heat
smooths over the glitch. I’m
reaching the underworld
with an oar in order to say
what’s twisted the slick rendition
of sky pasted flat with motor oil
against the surface. Time is on the fritz.
Not even the dead swarm here—
a species of insatiable thick grass
dips just into the waterskin that moves
my body faintly away
from where it started. Listen
a minute for dogs and engines—
live another life without knowing
the stream ends—the glisten
of a copperhead’s nuzzle
against the sun’s red thigh
Cate Peebles is the author of THICKET (winner of the Besmilr Brigham Award from Lost Roads Press, 2018) and several chapbooks, including THE WOODLANDS (Sixth Finch Books, 2016) and JAMES (dancing girl press, 2014). Recent work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, South Dakota Review, DIAGRAM, Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Harp & Altar, Paperbag, and elsewhere; her poems are forthcoming in Bennington Review, Washington Square Review, and Ploughshares. She co-edits the occasional online poetry, magazine, Fou, and lives in New Orleans.