Anne Menasché

Still Life with Fish

It’s as though you fell asleep at the wrong
party, and no one took off your silver

dress—just left you half buttoned, your pale stomach
shivering against the sheet someone laid

under you before leaving for a room
chandeliered with brighter stars. But morning

remembers you, and looks with her white eye
at your sighing slump, your mouth gasping.

Are you dreaming? A large, firm hand submerges you
into breathing cold while the moon flickers

farther into the distance. Gone are the mirror,
the plate of peach pits, the shards of glass pitching

back weak sunlight. Night rushes you forward.
It tastes like salt and it is almost endless.

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Anne Menasché grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley and now lives in Washington, D.C. Her poetry has previously appeared in Town Creek Poetry and Frontier Poetry.