Whale Eye
My eyes are creek stones covered in slurry.
Or my stones are not creek stones but marbles
Green with old trout-skin, tucked in a blanket
Of swollen.
Or my marbles aren’t marbles;
Instead, they’re coins with antique patina.
They’re as small as an anti-smorgasbord.
In my fat head, the coins don’t seem to fit:
They are slow and somewhat unreadable
Like a bluff.
Like the platonic cowboy,
The things squint; and the right, and its wilted
Lid, is different than the left. (I was young
Once with infection, the pupil near-blocked.)
Your eyes say you’re empty, a woman says.
Another says, Your eyes are like a whale’s.
Michael Marberry’s poetry has previously appeared in The New Republic, Waxwing, Sycamore Review, West Branch, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in The Pushcart Prize Anthology, Best of the Net, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and New Poetry from the Midwest. Originally from rural Tennessee, he is currently the Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University. More of his work can be found at www.michaelmarberry.com.