• Caulking

    by  • November 6, 2013 • Featured Poem, PD Online

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    The long hot summer we repair

    an old fishing boat on Harbour Road,

    did we beg, borrow or steal it?

     

    Spend hours putting gummy paste

    between planks, sticky glue elders

    use to keep a smile with false teeth.

     

    Swaddled in canvas, held above

    ground, like the basket our Bermudian

    maid used to carry us to the beach.

     

    A crucifix is left by a Portuguese

    hand above the captain’s wheel,

    Jesus’ body in the pinch of compass

     

    points like pink putty. Softens rough

    angles through the humid days,

    caulks the crack when we split apart.

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    About

    Nancy Anne Miller is a Bermudian poet. Her book Somersault is forthcoming from Guernica Editions (CA). Her poems have appeared in Edinburgh Review (UK), The International Literary Quarterly (UK), Stand (UK), Journal of Postcolonial Writing (UK), Mslexia (UK), New Welsh Review (UK) and The Moth (IE). She has an M. Litt. in Creative Writing from Univ. of Glasgow, is a MacDowell Fellow and teaches poetry workshops in Bermuda.