Patricia Clark

Patricia Clark is the author of Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars, her sixth book of poems, and three chapbooks. She has work just out (or forthcoming) in Plume, The Southern Review, North American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cimarron Review, Pedestal, Quartet, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. Her poem “Astronomy: ‘In Perfect Silence’” was chosen to go to the moon as part of the Lunar Codex on a NASA Space X flight in fall 2024. Her seventh book of poems, O Lucky Day, is forthcoming in January ’25 from Madville Publishing.

Captive at the B&I

If we were good in church,
                                    if we could sit still, kneel, pray,
            we might get to go

to the B&I store
                                    on South Tacoma Way, home
            of a carousel,

a pet shop, aisles
                                    and heaps of janky things
on sale, flip-flops, pails, shovels

for the beach, cheap shorts,
                                    t-shirts, beach towels, food, too:
            popcorn, hotdogs, pink

cotton candy wound on
                                    a stick. Around the corner, up
            a carpeted ramp, sat Ivan slumped

on a log in his small cell,
                                    plexiglass window his world.
            He was a featured

attraction, from South
                                    Africa, a silverback gorilla
            come to Tacoma

with its twin that died
                                    long ago. It was a blot,
            a scandal before

animal rights made
                                    the news. All you had to do
            was see his dark eyes,

how flat they’d become,
                                    light of life and joy long gone,
            all day facing more faces

peering in, fingers pointing.
                                    It didn’t take an expert
            to see it, “Dad, look!”

We’d say—poor Ivan—
                                    “He won’t swing on his tire
            or eat some melon.”

He’d been in his cell
                                    two decades, never living
            with his own kind, not

feeling grass or the
                                    sun, never a jungle rain
            or a moonlit night.

A sign taped up there
                                    said, “Do not tap on the glass.”
            When I leaned in close

it looked to me like
                                    Ivan’s eyes had filled with tears.
            I asked my father.

“No,” he said, softly,
                                    “Gorillas don’t cry.” I hoped
            father wouldn’t lie.

On the plexiglass
                                    I could see fingerprints and
            someone’s big red kiss.

[Ivan the silverback gorilla was born in Africa in 1962 and brought to Tacoma, Washington shortly thereafter. He lived in an enclosure at the B&I store for twenty-seven years before being moved to the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle where he was first able to go outdoors.]

Coffee Kiss

Give me one before I go, he pleads,
leaning down, moustache tickling my lips.
Nearly Easter and the Christmas balls hang
still in the bare magnolia, tied to branches.
Is winter through with us yet? Nothing’s sure
except the allium will rise from garden beds,
star magnolia and Cherokee chief dogwood
will flower. We booked passage on an ocean ship,
only now dreaming of what our ancestors
endured. What was their last sight of land?
We drove once to Schull, saw Fastnet Rock
(called Ireland’s teardrop), a place workers made casks
for stowing in the hold. Everyone on deck waving
though the folks on land had long disappeared.
Now how many days at sea, and what to eat
and drink? In a pocket, a piece of paper creased,
folded around a name of who they’d seek
in Boston or New York. Could they sleep?
Were they sick? How can the stories be lost,
names and ages of who came and when,
tales of what street they found, at the door
a friendly face, I hope? An uncertain future with no
money in wallet or purse, only a body, hands eager
to work.

                              He wants a coffee kiss but leaves
with worry, after—not our ocean cruise but what
a biopsy will show after the body’s breached.
Probe this, measure that, and lay out for us
what treatment he might face. Is that why
we leave the Christmas bulbs up to shine
in rain? They add a brightness, a bit of
whimsy that we need. My friend Judy tells me
a relative of hers crossed the Atlantic with a babe-
in-arms, a child who died but the woman wrapped
the body to her chest. “I won’t let them bury
this innocent at sea,” she said. She clung
to the corpse just like an orca and its calf
recently in Puget Sound. If I cut down gold
and red ornaments today, I’ll take care to wrap
them with tissue or bubble wrap against breakage,
fully aware so much remains uncertain
as the season—new blossoms might freeze, a storm
can smash a tree. What will another holiday bring
and to whom? I snip the ribbons, nestle ornaments
as best I can, March winds redden my hands,
chilling them to bone.