“Why It Didn't Work”

by Susan Blackwell Ramsey

(in response to J. Allen Hall's "Portrait of My Mother as the State of Texas," from RHINO 2005)

It has seemed a reasonable idea
    to paint herself as this modest tributary

in late March, froxen, but flowing under the ice.
    A crumbling bridge, some discreet graffiti

underneath, not easy to see but enough to forestall
    criticisms of prettiness, to suggest disruption, tension.

But subtle, subtle. She had it all roughed in
    by the end of the first day and went to bed happy.

It rained all night. By noon a flotilla
    of moon colored floes was collapsing

over the millrace like clubbed swans,
    dunked, roiled, bobbing up downriver trailing

long streamers of foam as the slammed
    into the jagged mass jamming the bridge,

rammed constantly from behind,
    nowhere ahead to go but over the falls.