THREE POEMS BY SOMMER BROWNING


          How I Came to be Adrift in an Undiscovered Harbor.


          sight sorrows.
          fig-dry auguries.

          in the swirl, a punctured can of sardines. delinquent pelicans grip-drop with their bird feet. they
          are as stable here as the hero mid-novel. their flight this kind of meridian. and it takes little
          arithmetic to discover it.

          someone observe mine.

          maybe because I’m mortal, but all life ends with me.

          for sense-sake, I’ve lost the map.


          Of the Way in which a Murderous Scoundrel Deposed Me.


          can-can girls with your witchy fingers
          I trust deliberately in the face of Bleak Heart’s

          nastiness. better not to bother with saber vs. sword
          when plunging into your finicky gut is bald fear.

          he is a buccaneer. and he sold my guitar.


          How my Sturdy Ship, Lorraine, Fell into the Hands of Captain Ruby Welles.


          her hands too huge to map, are valleys continents of men
          curl into. and I was too

          near the edge. I had seen a painting once
          and in it a young girl dances fiercely so her body

          is the novel and thinking
          on this, there are certain days,
          I lose my place. and though nothing

          excuses a captain, because for her mountains
          do shimmer in and out of sight, I must say that on that desperate day

          I was distracted. taken
          solely and full completely

          by her anchored beauty. framed and framing my very
          course unfortunate.

          I fell with Lorraine.

          captain ruby welles
          got nothing else but a damn good ship.


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Sommer Browning's poems and comix have appeared or will appear in spork, New York Quarterly, The Stranger, Forklift, Ohio, H_NGM_N and word for/word. Keep up with her here: Asthma Chronicles. She lives, works and plays in New York City.


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