Four Poems by Charles Rafferty

Sand Dollar

Once, as a small child, while walking
with my uncle, who happens to now be dead,
I picked up the only sand dollar I’ve ever found
on the edge of New Haven Harbor.
There was a small piece missing
and I threw it back, certain I’d find one better.

* 

Mona Lisa

She spends her time behind
a bullet-proof window
but she can’t stop your looks
inside. I’d like to tell her
what I’m thinking over drinks
and something vegan —
the Florence that she knew is
not today’s. By now she must be
tired of all the ogling
and the custard pies. Still,
I’d like to kiss her in the ear
with my tourist Italian. I’d talk
about the moon, how we used
to walk where she once gazed,
how we’re not going back there
very soon. Everyone believes
she’s just an old-school NFT,
but she’ll outlast the glaciers
if some of us can swim.

*

American Prospects

The ocean only proves
the yacht is brother to the wreck.
It doesn’t matter what
you’ve planned — Malibu
is burning, and the stilts
of your beach house
aren’t high enough. No one
ever saw a star inside
the Stock Exchange. You need
to be outside for that.
The sky is a hat
that is never out of fashion
but often despised.
The ocean lies beneath it,
and the wrecks are farther still.

*

Letter to America

I cannot hear my own accent.
I cannot smell my own
bad breath. Familiarity
works against us,
and the world beyond
our headlights is mysterious
and dark. It won’t be easy.
In the olden days
they drew monsters
in the corners of their maps.
They felt safer on a ship
with the land in sight.
Listen, I know I sound funny
to you, and the distance
between us is startling
and vast, but a coat left out
in the car all night
eventually makes us warm.
We need only put it on.

*

Charles Rafferty has published poems in such places as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review. His most recent collection is The Appendectomy Grin (BOA Editions). He is also the author of the story collection Somebody Who Knows Somebody and the novel Moscodelphia.