UNDER

by Jenna Le

Political Art is a painting by Gull G

Under the politician's monument,
there was a grub twisting in the topsoil,
and a topsail from an ancient ship
folded nine times,
and a mole with pale human-like fingers
prodding a tree root,
and under this,
a chest seething with stolen coins,
and an aquifer dank with depleted water,
and a cave system beading on for miles
and miles, and a vein of gold ore,
and a cache of diamonds, and a hoard
of sapphires, and under this,
a corpse moaning the name of its child.

Jenna Le is the author of Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011),  A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2017), and Manatee Lagoon (Acre Books, 2022). Her poetry appears in AGNI, Denver Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Verse Daily, and West Branch. 

THE COST OF THE WHITE

by Cally Conan-Davies

“When Roman emperors, Michelangelo and Mussolini needed the finest marble they all knew where to go—Carrara in Tuscany. But some are worried about the future of the quarries that have been used for thousands of years,” writes Antonia Quirke., BBC News Magazine, July 24, 2016. Photo: Carrara marble quarry. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Turning to stone is how some old bones last,
but David's statue seems to be relaxed
as if the stone were going the other way
into a body full of the light of day.

As if it could make light work of defeat,
after all, it had survived rejections
(unstable, they called it, flawed, the risk too great).
Until one man could see through imperfections

something to put his hands on, and set free
a man from a mountain.
Now the mountain is sinking
into counter tops and bathrooms, artlessly.

There are shadows in the falling light.
And nothing—not paper or pearls or stars—is always white.


Cally Conan-Davies is a writer who lives by the sea.