Kate O'Neill
At Fishtown, Old Kensington
Unknown waves of Delaware River lineage,
I am grandmotherless, a refracted light.
Edges sharpen all around with flecks
of silver-red scales, indiscernible bloodlines.
The river ricochets from its GPS, a few
latitudes from magnetic north, disoriented.
Our home speech differs. Schuylkill, a river's name.
Trout, bass, perch. Mellifluous. Invisible.
From Water Gap, a place that sounds like opening.
We alchemize flow from unknown remnants.
We smudge with blackthorn shillelagh embers,
smoke our coats-of-arms on cedar heartwood.
Grief
Dark glass raven eyes
tic back and forth.
Deniers eat
their young.
Red herring spill
hemlock guts
empty of roe.
Reindeer hooves
pucker perma
frost muck.
No time to
reach escape
velocity.
About Kate O'Neill
Kate O'Neill's poetry appears in the Taos Journal of the Arts, the Journal of War, Literature and the Arts, and Poetry Ireland Review, among others. She is a 2018 Fellow at Vermont Studio Center, teaches at UNM, holds an MFA from IAIA, and an EdD from Harvard.