Water, Wait


After Patti Smith’s “Horses” 

Poetry by Maria Robins-Somerville

Pretty boy, can’t you show me nothing but your open palm 
the nape of your neck, 
a little fingertip ripple on still water. 

Pretty boy you talk too much 
and when you talk I’m crazy 
When you talk I’m a racecar driver and when you talk 
it’s like that dream where I’m falling 
out of the dark and empty. 

I was cut quick from my mother 
and into the world in the mid-January 
bluster, six weeks preceding a late February 
flood. A boy teaches me the word 
antediluvian and after the flood 
I watch myself weep for nothing. 

My mother says I was born in blue light and serenity. 

Maggie says she fell in love with a color and 

Joni sketched her lover’s face onto a map 
by blue TV light. WBUR tells me 
that they’ve found a new blue pigment. 

I flatten blueberries on the page 
and bruise easy and cut squares from the sky 
like I’m making a quilt 


I make a mess and say who did this and don’t look 
I search for texture 
for a ruffle or a ribbon 
or just something I can work with. 

Can’t you show me nothing but surrender? 
I’ve got a dagger mouth and keys closed between knuckles 
Sometimes I hear your footsteps louder than my own. 

Sometimes I think I first knew it 
when I saw Danes and DiCaprio at the banquet 
locking eyes across a fish tank
the urge to say mine mine mine 
of a watery beast is a hopeless thing 

wanting to pull a boy out of a pool 
wanting to jar the air at a party 
electricity before we called it that 

I craved 

my lava lamp stomach 
swooped in. 

The first snow always reminds me 
of the night I heard a rumble-voice shout “YOU’RE FAT” 
and my feet, two short airborne moments splayed out on ice 
my lips blue & my cheeks hot. 

Pretty boy, can’t you show me nothing but surrender? 
Toss our white flag t shirts in a heap 
the way they fall, the blue in that.


Maria Robins-Somerville is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. Her poems have appeared in Gunk and The Michigan Daily.