Amy K. Genova Featured Reader at Tavern of Fine Arts on Monday, November 25

Amy K. Genova will be one of three featured readers at the •chance operations• reading at Tavern of Fine Arts, 313 Belt Avenue, on Monday, November 25.

Also featured will be Julia Gordon-Bramer and Henry Goldkamp.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m.; admission is FREE.

Amy K. Genova teaches composition at St. Louis Community College.  She has been published in in the American Poetry Review, REAL, Bad Shoe, Tipton Poetry Journal, Maize, Homestead Review, the Caprock Sun, and many others. This is her third year in St. Louis.  She'd rather be where there are palm trees, but toasted raviolis are good.  

Becoming light

This time I decide not to count laps but swim until tired.
It’s hard letting go: 2-4-6 … A gnomon-like shadow
slips
over the outdoor pool. Rings un-number themselves
off
my hands, five fingers squeezed like paddles clapping
water. But, then, that’s counting: tic, tic, tic. Anxiety
and sun clock my shoulder rosy. Will I swim enough?
Refocus on drain. Its clog of leaves. Cracks. Rust curving
algae down the pool belly. Lane dividers—red and blue.Perhaps, I’ll just count 400 IMs, neat lengths of 4x4s.
Would that be so bad? My sleek heart beat beat beats
without breath of comma in-betweens, despite symmetry—
left breath, no breath, right breath. Three beats. Undermy 90 degree elbow, freestyles the tree-glisten and sky.
One perfect hole in the clouds, God’s no-more-counting,
flip-turning. Just a good shove off the side into this glass

slipper
of warm shallow into cool deep.  A red-hatted
lifeguard, perches above my lane. Does he note my stroke?
Think I need saving?
Two swimmers come  &   go.      Am I tired?
             Invisible—
             Invisible—Turning, honeysuckle tickles my nose. A cloud-bit of radio
races after me. A thousand white leaves wade in sun.  My father rises again from water. Glasses, speckled
with splash.
My heart dolphins. Pop-static sings from the radio,

makes me feel like … I’m locked out of heaven. When numbers end:
light, cirrus strands, a boy in red trunks. A Doppler of dad in the pool

when I’m five …  This uncountable swim—

-- Amy K. Genova