Martingale
for Dave
Lawless, passerine, fork-tailed— her bill must nestle in a swallow’s mudhut spat up from the sand flown twelve storeys to the awning of a flat that rises to contempting yawns. But she is not a bird, not even an animal. The curves of her body flap only to the whims of probabilities innocent of wind. What happens next is not for us to say: perhaps the house is crushed; perhaps it stays.
Jake Goldwasser is a linguist, cartoonist, and poet based in Mountain View, California. His work can be found in The New Yorker, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and forthcoming in Homonym and Harbinger Asylum. He is interested in poetry that explores uncertainty in humans’ relationships with each other, the environment, and the future.
