AMY BETH SISSON

Fools Desire

The most exciting movement in nature is not progress, advance, but expansion and contraction, the opening and shutting of the eye... 

-Robert Frost

You assumed navigable waters’ grace 

Would last forever. Keep sea routes open. 

You assumed normal storms on the open sea.

Always weathered

Until you descended the deep trough. 

And walls of water loomed above.

When I grip my own hand between my thighs

Though long past my womb’s courses.

A rogue wave capsizes small craft.

Phosphenes

Now a veil

Softens.       I fear not so much

Blindness    As much as my brain's

Imaginary: The flock of silvered starlings

Flying at the periphery

Vision lonely for

Missing synapses

Cotton batting         Encases mind

Compressors hum

Every quiet moment

Before I lost my talent

For prayer   God's face

Appeared in random flashes and swirls

Behind my closed eyelids

Amy Beth Sisson's (she/her) poetry has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, Philadelphia Stories, The Shoutflower and One Art. She is an Associate Artist for the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice and an Editorial and Special Projects Assistant for FENCE Magazine.