Friday, June 24, 2023: Jan Steckel's "Voyage"

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Jan Steckel’s book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won Rainbow Awards for LGBT Poetry and Best Bisexual Book. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a Lambda Literary Award. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards.


Voyage


All night long I’d dreamed of old books,

secret rooms, packing trunks. When I got home

I drank snakebite chicory, remembered

the fifteenth century, when I was a clerk in a ship’s hold.

The big blond sailor with the Scandinavian name,

I thought we’d burn in hell for what we did

but didn’t care. Only ale and grog to drink, 

the occasional rain, the cask-water

too brackish for anything but washing. Cries of gulls

long gone, turtle soup, dry biscuit,

a bit of shoe leather called salted beef. Writing

was a skill that only I and the captain had. 

My Viking friend could break me with one hand.

I liked it that way. Time enough to wed 

on land; here was only the sparkle of stars

like mica in sandstone and the roll of timbers 

Then the dryer buzzed me back to Oakland,

under my feet. A tabby pierced a single pane 

with its hazel gaze screaming “Famine! Famine!

Where’s my goddam breakfast?


© 2023 Jan Steckel

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