Image: “Lighthouse at the Edge of the World” by G.G. Silverman. “I Asked the Chatbot to Write about a Lighthouse, but It Generated Lies” was written by Pamela Lucinda Moss for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, March 2023, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
I write dead eels, limb, salt, choke. I write the stairs are steep.
I write Retreat, with a capital R.
In the latest issue of Quagmire I find 7 new poems by Billy Collins.
In the new Kiss My Quarterly, 12 poems by Billy Collins.
Coming soon in Broken Meter, 18 poems by Billy Collins.
I’ve all but given up on ever speaking Irish again,
on playing the cousin to tones of a country once removed,
plucking on phrases I learned phonetically under
the nettled glare of a Christian Brother.
That’s what we want
for our children, isn’t
it? Shoulders that fit
like shoulder pads.
Take the time
my brother, just a boy,
sat alone in the house
and spoke to the stray.