“Martingale” by Jake Goldwasser

"Martingale" by Sylvia Yu / sylvia-yu.com/

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.