If it could speak it would say,
Clean
up in aisle three;
would shower
the day with debris
of off-key mea
_culpa_s.
It fancies itself
the lost doppelganger
of a mid-
fifth-century saber,
practicing its rattle
when not at the table.
It’s prone to chip
stoneware and fracture
decanters, to trampling a mirror
or rim of rare crystal,
and it ponders
and ponders
with thoughts
bordering
wonder, the odd snag
of an ankle or dactyl,
the brave punch
bowl bulge at the back
of the skull,
aesthetic
bendings in a mandible
and clavicle,
porcelain swell
of a tea-cup patella.
Hailey Leithauser is the author of two poetry collections: Saint Worm (Able Muse Press, 2019) and Swoop (Graywolf Press, 2013), which won the Poetry Foundation’s Emily Dickinson First Book Award and the Towson Prize for Literature. Her work has appeared in The Birmingham Poetry Review, 32 Poems, Cincinnati Review, The Hopkins Review, Plume, Poet Lore, AGNI, Alaska Quarterly Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and The Yale Review. (updated 4/2023)
Leithauser’s AGNI poem “The Moon Speaks of Polar Bears” was chosen for The Best New Poets 2010.