You are given a small raft to ferry a wolf, 

a goat, and a cabbage across a river. 

The cabbage is your son, he opens like a bloom.      

Your career, [“art” as you call it,] is a horned 

animal, an eater of leafy greens. Warm stones 

bake in your pelvis, to beckon the wolf closer. 

What to leave on the shore? What to carry 

to ride the river’s fatness? If one want is inverted, 

stolen by the water’s arms, the crack 

in your pot-shaped heart will distend; 

the [could-have-been] might mutate 

into your boldest poem. If you let 

the [wild] [dog] drown, you might win 

a gilded trophy. Water-stars lull you to sleep. 

You nightmare to life a golden anchor, wrapped 

in a braid of weeds. You don’t know when 

it happened, but your hair has grown 

one-hundred years old. You look like 

a rain cloud. The river is a field of mud.

Erica Miriam Fabri is a Brooklyn-based poet and photographer and the author of two books: Morphology (Write Bloody Publishing) and Dialect of a Skirt (Hanging Loose Press). Morphology won the Jack McCarthy Book Award, and Dialect of a Skirt was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. She teaches writing at Hunter College and at the College of Staten Island for the City University of New York (CUNY). www.ericafabri.com