One Big Time - Tapa blanda

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Lisa Fishman is the author of eight books of poetry, a short story collection, and several chapbooks. Her newest poetry book is One Big Time, out on Wave Books in spring, 2025. World Naked Bike Ride was published in Canada by Gaspereau Press in 2022 and was a finalist for the Canadian ReLit Award in short fiction. Other Wave poetry titles are Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition (2020) and 24 Pages and other poems (2015). Fishman is also the author of three books on Ahsahta Press: F L O W E R  C A R T (2011); The Happiness Experiment (2007); and Dear, Read (2002); the latter was selected by Brenda Hillman as a finalist for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. Fishman’s other books are Current (Parlor Press, 2011) and The Deep Heart’s Core is a Suitcase (New Issues Press, 1996).

Fishman’s work is anthologized in Best American Experimental Writing (Omnidawn, 2014, ed. Cole Swenson), The Ecopoetry Anthology (Trinity University Press, 2013), The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral (Ahsahta Press, 2012), Not For Mothers Only (Fence Books, 2007), American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2000) and elsewhere. She is a dual US/Canadian with earlier roots in both the Detroit area and Montreal.

Fragmento. © Reproducción autorizada. Todos los derechos reservados.

July 10–13

you could just say

   not anything

   in the forest

under hemlock

   waterbeing going by

  meant to write waterbody

but it came out waterbeing

under treebody

––––

it’s different outside how the ground is

warm: springy, moss-covered and

root-traversed, very warm

                          underfoot, under trees’

             shade

             the borrowed cabin’s

new laminate floor makes your feet

very cold

       what else

    for the loves

––––

The current of the lake is swift

like a river

is it a river? I ask but no one

says yes or no one

knows

because it is a lake

that merges w/other lakes

I ask for a map but

                          none appears

Water being

one that flows: F L O W - e r

                                       gets to

               open in

             the swim

morning, night &

       in between

   all day

             Day all a bird

     sound makes

off to the side

            —can’t say which direction but you know

over the shoulder, not far

the names of friends pop in

across the page and then

my father’s handwriting for a

few words where I see

he made his fs and gs

different from mine

    there’s the water

moving swiftly

   this forest

––––

Have not found the passage to the other lake

just to the left of downed trees    where someone pointed

I set off

in my boat twice and the

first time did not find it &

                                   the second time

             did not find it

In between he asked

                          if I found it

No I said but will look again

It’s marshy he said

             and I set off again

looking more closely

where you might get thru

a marshy, hidden passage

but it stayed hidden

so I’ll look again

although I’d really like to go in the other direction

with the current, which is consistent

every day—it blows or moves

                                       from north to south

ask why

when he brings a map

Also looked for the passage on foot

(banked the boat on “Crown land”)

across the water

but only found myself lost,

or rather, surprised

ea. time I came out of the

                          forest to the water

to see where I was

             on the shoreline

& it seemed I kept ending up in

             the same place

even tho that makes no sense at all

actually it seemed I was in a different place

but that a landmark I’d noted somewhere else

had shifted too and was now in the different place

where I was, which I understand

is impossible

P. S. Evergreens were dying all the way up the U. P.

                                                                              but not here