I Mean Welcome


 
 
I mistook the white iris for a ship. Mistook
the dandelion for a bass player. Yes, you
always did say I was ungrateful. I mean
 
bald dandelion.
I mean a contrabassoon. I mean I think about
who puts the double reed to lips.
 
You said I was unbelievable and I said a ship
isn’t a suspension of belief it is flag-bearing,
engineered, resonant. Who makes what.
 
Elocution, Alice. And selfish, yes, you said that,
too. The mistake is not to mistake or not a failure
of engineering—is like Julia Child dropping a hen.
 
I mean a Baptist. I mean a well hole. Do you recall
falling in to the rustdark? I do. I do. It was a mirror
absence. I mean a bass line.
 
I mistook not saying so. The run through.
There, we’ve dropped the chicken, haven’t
we. I mistook
 
beauty in remembrance of sin. I mean
the ship was my fault. I’ll own it. I mean
I am from a place.
 
 
 

Kate Murr is a recent graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She grew up on Main Street in a rural southwest Missouri town and teaches as a working artist in rural schools and at the Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri. Her chapbook about Bald Knobbers, the devil, and art was selected among the finalists for last year's Sunken Garden contest at Tupelo Press. Her work appears in anthologies from Pencil Box Press and FootHills Press.