by Judith Skillman
If only an ornament
gone cold
in winter, still we feed it water,
carry the weight
of our old sorrows
from useless gas stove
to sink,
filling and refilling
the hollow well
inside—a cavern
with no cave fish.
If only window dressing
for the Victorian era,
still we watch it
as if a tomb
could boil. We
worship the glow
cast by light
into its painterly middle
and along the wooden handle,
the silence
of its bird beak spout.
Judith Skillman’s work has appeared in Shenandoah, Poetry, Zyzzyva, FIELD, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. Her collection Kafka’s Shadows was published by Deerbrook Editions in February 2017.