2007 Prizewinner

Beggar's Purse
Sally Albiso

Ours was the creosote of dank morning,
the pier's uneven planks
that made me sway toward the cold pull of water,

how I'd rise like a seabird mouthing fish,
through I turned away from the quick gutting,
the entrails curled in sinks

corroded with salt and blood.  We breathed
the cured air in, the brine that lifted our lungs,
the dried seaweed textured like rice paper

in your photograph albums of China
where coolies stood harnessed to rickshaws.
And you told me about the nuns of Shanghai,

praying for you in perpetuity,
an orphaned Marine from Brooklyn
who helped provision their home for foundlings,

and of the White Russian girl you loved,
who escaped from revolution to revolution,
the one who wasn't my mother,

left behind when you were ordered out.
And the Pacific roiled beneath us
so that the sea became your voice,

the pier my beach head of remembering
how palms can be the map of the world
where men pull other men about,

and blind beggars cup light at your feet,
their hands lifting like fish
pulled to the surface of water.