Divorcee Cleans the Stagnant Pool
Melanie Graham
Snakes: coralled and out.
Pooling among the sparse St. Augustine,
the rental vac pump’s thick green flood is an exact replica
of Technicolor cloud that crawled the sky
toward Charlton Heston’s tan chest
and the doomed of Egypt.
Female frogs: harder to wrangle.
Unwilling to abandon their offspring,
the not fish/not yet frog iridescent bluish beads
scooped out, flung across the fence—
twenty-five years of the same mother-of-pearl necklace
fed to a yard of hungry geese.
Dead males: float white.
Bodies twisted like grief wrung handkerchiefs
or glassine love letters so thin the words dissolve.
A tapestry of leaves rust the water;
a blind woman’s fortune;
swirling, unreadable.