dementia
how lonely the water
tired of weather-talk
father dreams of glistening
faces the sky was inferno—orange
reds rusted steel
a house rises from abyss
a living cold blue lake
ashes of a winter storm
cinder and crows
my father—silent fire
tires so easily now
voice like the sky
whispering clouds onto glass
a language of voyages
moonrise of emergency
we are oars the hardest
part: the syllabic weeping
the mouth of heartbeat
the storm’s blind furnace
our life reflected in narrow
wet streets even brake lights
the color of null
Patty Paine is the author of Grief & Other Animals, The Sounding Machine, and three chapbooks. She edited Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf. Her poems, reviews, and visual works have appeared in Blackbird, Adroit, Gulf Stream, Lomography, Thrush, The South Dakota Review, and other publications. She is the founding editor of Diode Poetry Journal and Diode Editions and is Director of Liberal Arts & Sciences at VCUarts Qatar.