When My Heart Stops, I’ll Float My Boat on a Lake

                                                                       by Dianna MacKinnon Henning


far away. I’ll have my writing pens with me
to spear fish that flaunt their fluidity. When

waves tickle rainbow trout the stars will break
out in laughter. The water won’t be deep.

Just wet.

The shoreline is a girl’s kerchief. She’s bolts
across sand to escape the bronze gilded man
with his bow and arrow. He’s just a tan man
attempting to look like a shape shifter. Mud

fills his tracks.

A gale with a mustache tips my rowboat.
My liver is cast iron. It refuses to sink.


* * * * *

Dianna MacKinnon Henning taught through California Poets in the Schools, received several CAC grants and taught poetry workshops through the William James Association’s Prison Arts Program which included Folsom Prison. Henning’s third poetry book Cathedral of the Hand published 2016 by Finishing Line Press. Recent Publications: Pacific Poetry; New American Writing; The Kerf; The Moth, Ireland; Mojave River Review; the New Verse News; Sequestrum; VerseVirtual; Your Daily Poem and Naugatuck River Review. Four-time Pushcart nominee.