My Swans  – Milo Gallagher

I’d like to think I’m ironclad,

but each new disappointment surprises me.

I had a flock of brothers,

but they’re all swans now.

I planted some charmed beans,

but what little that grew

was stunted, and bitter.

The sugar ants are everywhere –

the countertops, my cereal,

the folds of my clothes.

I crush their tiny bodies with my thumb,

but more arrive as if poured from a jar.

They say everyone in the dream is really you –

the taxi driver, the crow, the bodiless mouth.

Sometimes I am my mother,

scrubbing the floor, or pinching clay

into bowls that hold no water.

At midnight I think I see my brothers

sailing the surface of the marsh.

Their bodies lit up from below like votives,

candles bobbing for the lost at sea.