Why I Jumped That Ship

By Suzanne Marie Hopcroft

The iced-over rivers of our unchanged
territory were starting to unfreeze. Across
               cobbles and through clapboard you could

hear the click of jewelry boxes itching to
unlatch themselves, every mother’s wired
               pearls and velveteen jostling on short legs

in the inlaid dark. Any mind without
too many somersaults would have seen
               the robins nesting in my hair were about to

wing themselves cloud-side, the tune
to their march a round.  Egalitarian was
               the tea-brown stain blotting me out in our

unshone silver, Bess’s lip extruded a
mile over sweaty lace.  And across that
               lapping plain, a minuet—women’s white

hands skimming the air, the tinny rustle of
prescience wove into their crossband silks,
               futures bargained swift and cool and sound.

Suzanne Marie Hopcroft's poetry is forthcoming or has recently appeared in Word Riot, decomP, Softblow, The Catalonian Review, Spork, Pank, and others. Suzanne is a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Yale University and writes from New York City, where she also teaches composition at Hostos Community College.

 

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