Things Recovered from a Shipwreck
Fruit Forks
Piano Keys
Chessmen
someone’s belongings
sought after, brought up
into the dry world to live
behind glass a half life
in which they exact nothing
except their own shape,
the names of things
on small white cards
stand like guards
against their past
yet nothing so recoverable
from the three drowned women
as their own names brimming
with the selves they might have been
Eliza Peirce
Mary Peirce
Amy Paul
Published in “All the different darknesses”, by Gill Horitz,
Cinnamon Press