Three Poems
by Abby Caplin
YOU CAN’T GO BACK
Miguel called. Ally
left him after he slapped her.
He was terribly
sorry. He asked me shouldn’t
she forgive him? They
would divorce. I would never
see either again.
We had mourned Victor Jara’s
murder, turntable
spinning between us. His wife
Joan died today. Where are they?
ANTHROPOCENE CHOKA
I pick my way through
wet sand, sidestepping splintered
planks, KFC lids,
teal nitrile gloves, and observe
a barge pushing sea-
water like a dung beetle
working its heap; pause
at a cormorant’s opal
eye, blind to its own tableau.
PACKS
Cherry blossom petals, hurried forward
by marine winds, bounce down streets like kids
dismissed from school for the summer.
Hundreds of them scurry ahead of me
where mostly thirtysomethings crowd around café tables
next to a bus stop and others are disembarking.
Dog leashes of teal and coral and sunflower,
this jumbled mix of hipster and homeless
with their canines, everyone sharing names and breeds
over plates of labneh and baba ghanoush and milk
pudding scented with orange blossoms.
A woman serenades from a tavern across the street,
and when she reaches a long, high
note, fairy lights turn on, the sky folds
into lavender and darkens, pale stars still visible
in the sudden specter of ear-nipping fog,
those bundles of padded jackets and scarves who walk
their singular routes with Dolly or Barkley or Lulu
or Orion, who sniff terrain and drain their bladders, then settle
into beds or under trees of heaven.
BIO: Abby Caplin’s poems have appeared in AGNI, Catamaran, Midwest Quarterly, Moon City Review, Pennsylvania English, North American Review, Salt Hill, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Southampton Review, and elsewhere. Among her awards, she has been a finalist for the Rash Award in Poetry and the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Award, a semi-finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award, and a nominee for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. She is the author of A Doctor Only Pretends: poems about illness, death, and in-between (2022). Abby is a physician in San Francisco, California.