Poetry – Issue 2 | December 2008
Travelogue
by ME Hope
Murano, 1998—Off to the side, boats bob in a row
along the canal: red, blue, yellow and here is a boy
his head resting against the rail of steps that lead
down to the boats. You focus on him, is there
a bird floating by, some fish swirling like leaves
just beneath the surface? His sweater matches
the color of the boats, his face closer to the green
of the canal.
Beside him at a table littered with empty cappuccino cups
a man leans back, his animated daughter on his lap.
She is five, her hands blur in the photo, birds in flight
as she swings her braids and tells a story. The man
is laughing, his sunglasses catch twin suns as the girl
watches the camera pointed her way.
Nearly in shadow, the one with the camera focuses
on the scene: canal, late sun, the man, the girl and
the boy—fever already burning through his small frame—
while she takes the picture, calculates the time
for the ride back to the mainland, the long night ahead
away from home.
About the author
ME Hope travels the state of Oregon in an economy car-cum-kayak; most of the right side of the state is dry but over the mountain, watch out. After two decades of wanderlust, she has settled in Southern Oregon, where she still misses Roma, fresh calamari and any European train station. When not herding cats or teens she wades through the banality and bureaucracy of being a government employee. Recent or upcoming pubs include High Desert Journal, Rattle and the Oregon Literary Review.
Read our current issue, Issue 2 | December 2008:
Poetry
Berlin by Sy Margaret Baldwin
Two Poems by Sean Edgley
After Your Funeral I Set Out to Find You in Different Time Zones by Jennifer Faylor
Painter by Ricky Garni
Other Than by Dana Guthrie Martin
Two poems by Timothy Kercher
Five Views of Guanajuato: A Mythology by Athena Kildegaard
Two poems by Mary Kovaleski Byrnes
Goya by Trent Nutting
The Changing of the Flowers by Jennifer Saunders
Two poems by Ken Turner
Postcard prose
Buttons by Jennifer Faylor
The Enemy Tree by Kirby Wright
Escape on the Canal by Addie Zierman
