Homesick While in Boston

Aditi Gupta

The sky is not an upturned porcelain bowl.
It’s a giant koi
a cloudy blue-white body
and giant eye.

An old man at the dock sits
pulling up stinking silvery fish
from the Charles. They flop
like aluminum foil possessed.

A praying mantis
with a fishing pole in his hands,
he looks as old as the river.
surrounded by stink.

I wish I could pay
and cross in one step.

And I miss your arms
that were never around me.

This must be why Copley painted
his stepbrother
with that vacant look in his eye
and a chained squirrel at his command.

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