The Sunday Poet: David Gullette

 

Poet David Gullette

DAVID GULLETTE was one of the first editors of Ploughshares and is Literary Director of The Poets’ Theatre, which presented his adaptation of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf in December 2015 and his BOSTON ABOLITIONISTS in March 2017 at the Boston Athenaeum. He has also acted with the ART, Christmas Revels, Actors Shakespeare Project, and NPR’s The Spider’s Web. His book of poems, QUESTIONABLE SHAPES, was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2017.

ICED

The old eskimo on her ice floe keeps

A seal-blubber fire going under the pot where

The naïve frog lounges in his personal Jacuzzi

That, yes, is getting slowly warmer but

All the same down they drift toward

The Bay of Exhausted Proverbs

Whose waters are less and less frozen

Every year.

                        The emaciated polar bear

Clambers up on the floe and eyes the frog

With disgust and the old woman with curiosity.

            “I’ve heard of you,” the bear tells her.

“When you’re too old to, pardon the cliché,

‘give back to the community’ they set you adrift.”

            “Don’t believe everything you hear,” she says.

“I was bored with the long days and nights

of childcare and foodprep and lovemoans from

the next furry blanket. So I’m on sabbatical.

Call it a cruise.”