PATTY NASH

WATERWAYS

Our landlord (provisional)
explains the outboard motor.
He glints with his eyes
and phonates his vowels.
He holds an oblong plastic lung
and squeezes it. It evinces
liquid motioned laggardly
from the opaque red gallon
with his arm,
alternate arm
opening and closing
the onboard cellarette the
engine the liquid's
going to's

in. He then holds
out his hand,
rutilant palm a little
flying-saucer squishy
dinghy floating in the air
for soft and instable
palms like ours
to hold. My cousin's outstretched
and flailing arm grabs
it and steps
inside.
Dithering a little
one side to the other.
My other cousin does same.

WATERWAYS

In the dinghy (also),
I see his hands
now grip an ellipsoidal
adult-human-sized-paddle-qua-
oar I didn't
notice his reaching for,
nor his tensing his
torso in expectancy for,
nor his tilting it so neither
my cousin nor I would
feel its opposite end
splinter or rub against
our faces. He is squinting in the distance.
The thin side is towards us
and the oval surface is away.

WATERWAYS

You may have noticed.
He says like a statement.
We've slowed down a little.
Something caught in the outsized
screw propellers
ferrying us's
stalled our swift
motion in a narrow inlet
of mountains and sea
(glaciers cut steep
troughs
and melted
with saltwater)
it's a beautiful day outside

to be clutching the banisters
aboveboard
admiring.
Like you might be.
The mouthpiece
of our captain
at the helm
tells us to.
More blue than anything else.
And but for the noise
very quiet.
Things made of mesh
sink to the floor.
Sometimes get loose and get caught.

WATERWAYS

One swan
curves its neck
back and half
lifts its
wings.
One swan
bridles,
a smaller
white and unsteady
splotch behind a mound
of grass.
Swans
feed in water
and on land.

My back
is arched
and cracking
and both
hands clutch the stern
of the boat
my cousin's
steering with his hands
behind him,
guided
by the landlord's
sound voice round the emergent
sandy islet as a swan
I and others hear

emit
the single noise
the swan emits,
signaling us
stay away,
comes closer.
Wings spread and near the water.

Patty Nash is a poet and translator. Her work appears or is forthcoming in jubilat, The Journal, Prelude, and elsewhere. She received MFAs in poetry and literary translation from the University of Iowa and lives in Berlin.