Portrait I am but a laudatory patron of this aqueous world, watching life unfold in its perfect constancy: the black-and-white spotted upside-down catfish, that swings awkwardly right-side-up to munch on bloodworms, the small tetras, their red bird-of-paradise stripes— the speckled-green dwarf frog that springs up, marionette-like from its dead man’s crawl. All of them flash their light in this humid greenhouse, fresh with the murmurs and burbles of one thousand conversations— I listen. They glide, uninterested in my patronage. Five glass fish flitter past and I watch their bodies contort around a sinewy spine. Diminutive brown hearts beat so rapidly, I think they will explode. And I think about floating, and about the ways of things, and I know what they say and I do not know what they say: but the day is so warm, and the trees are so happy, waving their arms and yawning. The fish and the plants are talking to each other, so why interrupt? I content myself with opening the window, and sit down to write this poem, this prayer.
Bracha K. Sharp has been published in the American Poetry Review, the Birmingham Arts Journal, ONE ART: a journal of poetry (where she was a nominee for Orison Books’ Best Spiritual Literature, Wild Roof Journal, The Closed Eye Open, and the Thimble Literary Magazine, among others. She placed first in the national Hackney Literary Awards and she was a finalist in the New Millennium Writings Poetry Awards. As her writing notebooks seem to end up finding their way into different rooms, she is always finding both old pieces to revisit and new inspirations to work with. She is a current reader for the Baltimore Review. www.brachaksharp.com
Amethyst Review 