Paulette Guerin: 3 Poems

Musée d’Orsay

Not water lilies floating behind Plexiglas
or the icy stare
of van Gogh’s self-portrait,
but the ballerinas
buoyant yet balanced en pointe, 
compelled the man’s cry.

All heads turned toward him, strapped 
in his wheelchair.
He could not tell the nurse
to let him linger
at Degas’s frozen figures.

The rest of us resumed our reverie, 
waiting to be moved.

At the Jardin des Plantes

Zoo-goers walk blindly past a white owl 
sitting meekly, his cage too small 

for flight. Across the walkway, teal peacocks 
shriek as passersby tease them for their tails. 

In spite of beaks poised to attack
and sounds a far cry from a siren’s call,

​they are too beautiful not to stare; so we look, 
even as the feathered fan sees all.

The Little Mermaid Vacations in Florida

They avoid the main drag of seafood shacks 
with happy crustaceans on their signs. 
She no longer collects human things.  
She wants sand dollars, sea anemone. 
It’s been too long since she’s slipped 
into the water’s second skin. At night,

she doesn’t doubt her legs around him
as his hands find the small of her back. 
Each morning she rubs her knees, 
stares at painted toes. Sometimes she forgets
how to walk, spending hours in the bath. 
If youth is possibility, adulthood is choice.

Now she swims until the water is cold, 
no longer hearing him on his cell.
There’s just the water-whipped
rush of some large fish snagging a meal. 
She’s heard of people who swim 
so far they can’t go back.

Paulette Guerin is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Florida. She lives in Arkansas and teaches English and writing at Harding University. Her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2018, ep;phany, Concho River Review, The Tishman Review, Contemporary Verse 2, and others. She also has a chapbook, Polishing Silver.