You Be the Skipper, I’ll Be the Sea
This time of year, Agamemnon’s
tomb is swarming with Beliebers.
If I was your boyfriend, Clytemnestra...
What’s the theme of this one, teacher?
Like gold-leaf masked talismans,
we raised our iPhones in the dark.
Our ringtones were a Greek chorus
calling from the hive to lion guards.
Said: I'm a novel with the pages uncut.
Someone flipped me open and had enough.
Now reading me rips me in two.
What’s a poem for? What’s it to you?
Who said size don’t matter lied.
The shaft of the cistern in the hillside
had me on my hands and knees.
I lapped up clay with my teeth.
We were catamarans in my last fantasy,
moved in this world like a stone over sea.
You stole me away from the treasury.
Freedom, Siri, was a machine.
by Cassidy McFadzean
Cassidy McFadzean
Cassidy McFadzean’s work has appeared in CV2, Vallum, Carousel, Arc,and The Fiddlehead. In 2013 she was a finalist for the Walrus Poetry Prize and the CBC Poetry Prize. Born in Regina Saskatchewan, Cassidy is currently an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Work for Monthly Verse is selected through our editorial process. New poems are selected from authors that submitted work for the last issue. Read more authors by subscribing to Fjords.