Issue > Poetry

Mark W. Fry

Mark Fry's work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, The Greensboro Review, Quarterly West, Spoon River Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, ZYZZYVA and numerous other publications. Mark is a homemade poet working out of Portland, Oregon. He is putting together a manuscript of his poems to be submitted for publication soon.

Elegy In Amalfi

We end here, where
Fishing is king.
On the harbor's slower water, Italy, tenderly
Spanks our boat's bottom.
We laugh like terrible infants as the bilge quivers,
Climbs my canvas shoe.
We swordfight for coins with genuine baguettes.
A crowd gathers near the fountain.
The children are frightened. Don't be,
We say, they're harmlessly fresh.
We go to the upper gardens.
Our driver hasn't shaved.
Among the lemon trees, birds
With miniature lives
Are the newest souls a local said.
What a self, even here
An engine. The sun
So white on the chocolate shop wall it hurts.
I close our eyes, there,
There is the only home we know
With light inside where it belongs.