What do you see?
A woman falling into water.
What color is the water?
The color of Monday.

A woman falling into water.
She is naked — stark — her hair
the color of Monday.
She, like Ophelia, needs flowers.

She is naked — stark — her hair
nothing like leaves in spring.
She, like Ophelia, needs flowers.
Buds refusing to open

nothing like leaves in spring
Stems on her seashell hat
with buds refusing to open.
Her Fredricks of Hollywood corset

pokes out from under her seashell vest.
The naked water polo was a bust, she said.
Her Fredricks of Hollywood corset —
too much mercury, unwanted guests.

The naked water polo was a bust, she said.
Drowning on Thursday, she scolds the dogs.
Too much mercury, unwanted guests.
Resigned to headaches, like an angel she dives in.

Drowning on Thursday, she scolds the dogs.
Victoria’s Secret hottie wears a clamshell teddy.
Resigned to headaches, like an angel she dives in.
Goldfish swirl around her day-of-the-week panties.

Victoria’s Secret hottie wears a clamshell teddy.
Lace laps at the shores of her hedge fund.
Goldfish swirl around her day-of-the-week panties.
What color is the water? The color of Monday.

by the Long Table Poets: Helen Brandenburg, Richard Garcia, Barbara Hagerty, Kit Loney, Susan Meyers, Deborah Lawson Scott, Katherine Williams, and Joe Zealberg

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Process notes

Richard Garcia writes:
This pantoum was composed at a class one evening at my house. Each student had a page from a collage novel by Max Ernst, A Week of Kindness. We also wrote the pantoum as a kind of exquisite corpse. The paper was folded so each student could only see the preceding stanza. To keep busy while each student worked on their section they were also writing a separate draft of their poem in any style they wished.

The fastest substance in the universe
is light, at times less stuff than circumstance
—although it is the stuff my other hands
are made of, when they aren’t made of glass.
Your dress so cool and silky to the touch
as I waltzed you through the plate glass window,
more light than substance. Bloody hands and elbows,
but we didn’t care so much, not being much
but carbon, gas, a circumstantial spark.
By night, plate glass is blacker than your dress,
but not by much. I always have loved glass,
loved you, transparent coolness in the dark—
the fastest light, cool, black in our hands, sublime,
as we broke through together, that last time.

by Katherine Williams

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