by Merrill Oliver Douglas
To sip vodka from an ice glass at the Ice Hotel.
To sleep in the southernmost house in Tierra del Fuego.
To sit with a friend, tearing bits of bread
from the same loaf, chewing, listening.
To swim as slowly as possible and let
the lane’s dark tile ribbon tow me toward the far end.
To see through the eyes of the fat bees
that feed all day on oregano flowers.
To ask the ass how he dared take up the lyre
with only hooves for hands.
Then to sit quietly adoring that music.
Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full length collection, Persephone Heads for the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. It will be published in 2024. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, Little Patuxent Review and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives near Binghamton, New York.