Soliloquy Of A Shallow Duck Poem by Indigo Hawkins

Ice and ice and ice and I couldn't suss it out, so he said,
'Start with the stumbling chunk, with the scud-thunk
of kicking a queen. Soon you'll see what I mean
about satisfaction.' So I waited and wanted and waited,
but felt nothing other than tears and gasoline—
got nothing other than tremulous curling cloth,
icons swishing and swooning into a groaning
poverty. While I collected a procession of dawns,
The Girl Who Had Everything came along
to strip my assemblage but first capitulated
to thready obsession, dipped into a depression,
and so we spent decades dozing in droopy intimacy.
I sat with her all the while, the sky spewing ice
and ice and ice on her bundles of baleful tires,
heavy black floating eyes on my feathered lake.
Then with a supple shriek, the performance ended
and we passed into a stupefying storm of budding
orange blossoms instead of snow and I don't know
how, I just can't suss it, it’s so irrelevant, and he said,
'An improv on ice is never the same twice, of course.'