SurVision Magazine
An international online magazine
that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.
Issue Ten
JAN CLAUSEN
The Ship
I stood on a dock – on the Hudson, I guess –
absorbed in the plight of a high-masted ship.
It came gliding toward me, sails perfectly angled,
bellied smooth with the breath
of a temperate wind.
Then the shift. I exclaimed, "but it's sinking!"
seeing how the deck was already submerged,
though each detail showed plainly
in water so transparent
it belied simple thoughts
of above and below.
Thus sailing and sinking
the ship, enigmatic –
an engine all grace, unperturbed
in its path.
Here I stand on wood planks
in my un-fluid being
while the ship has no problem
with sinking and sailing
in one fluent motion
of beauty and peace.
at my age, why is it still so crowded in the House of Family?
A sister is a mirror
of unlikeness
A father is a hall not a cubicle
but only a father
dies
A mother
smothers lightly
and lives forever
A brother? Most unlikely,
frankly inconceivable
~
I dream that I am married to my father. This seems to be a purely formal relation. He and my mother have gotten a divorce. (Perhaps she's been set aside – there's a whiff of that.) My husband (my actual husband) chimes in. Says it's inappropriate
~
She instructs me (her daughter)
how to think about death
as if I were not
going there myself
Jan Clausen lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her most recent (sixth) poetry title is Veiled Spill: A Sequence (GenPop Books). Poems have appeared in journals and anthologies such as AGNI, Bloom, Drunken Boat, Fence, Hanging Loose, Kenyon Review, Nimrod, Ploughshares, Poems from the Women's Movement, Poetry Northwest, and Triquarterly. She has published several books of fiction, and Seven Stories Press recently reissued her 1999 memoir, Apples and Oranges.
