Zodiac

I had never before seen anyone make a boat

it looked enough like a boat though I would

not get in any kind of water with it you took

it out to the bay launched it from marshy

land and languished it in the sun like a volcano

there are houses on that side now the kind

with common volleyball courts and dedicated

picnic areas as if you lived on the grounds of a

park I picnicked alone away from the tables

and drove home through Benicia thinking about

the Zodiac some things just wind themselves up

give themselves over to the next thing sitting

idle like a passenger tongue lolling

like a martyr I looked up and it was all over

Bryan D. Price’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Posit, Diagram, Hinchas de Poesia, Inverted Syntax (and others). He lives and teaches history (and sometimes humanities) in Southern California where he is working on a manuscript of elegies.