No Swimming Today

Martha Strom

and when i got out of the pool

my tailbone hurt

the day took a bite out of me too

mean icy teeth

in a bright gold smile

yellow the ginkgo too

baby snow born in fire

bind your teeth

don’t say

set your sights on someone

more like yours

someone with white light

for a moustache

mind

wishes this body could swim

jack says it is zero degrees

In Ontario

 

Martha Strom lives in Brooklyn, New York, after starting out in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Boston, Princeton, and Atlanta. So she feels grateful to get to settle in and write in NYC. Her poems have also appeared in New Letters, Passager, Common Ground Review, and other journals. Recently, some of her art appears in Straylight Literary Arts Magazine.

Read more poems by Martha Strom here →