Keeping Company With You: Coma by Stephanie Strickland


 
 

                                 for my father

 

                —the gills still swimming

with you, breathing for you, tumbling backward
toward some

                future. Shallow breath.

A passing shiver. Your dream of light,
knowing no other

                time, moves inside

rocking shadow of water, as if some
one still

                stood on the broken

patio, haggling for hours
the price of a pool

                lamp, its broken cord.
 
 
 

Stephanie Strickland has published 8 books of poetry and 11 digital poems, most recently the Vniverse app for iPad with Ian Hatcher and Hours of the Night, an MP4 PowerPoint poem, with M.D. Coverley. Two books are forthcoming in 2019: Ringing the Changes, a code-generated project for print based on the ancient art of bell-ringing, from Counterpath Press, and How the Universe Is Made: Poems New & Selected from Ahsahta Press. http://stephaniestrickland.com