Bridget Menasche
Form of Clouds
Spring storms roll down the mountain’s nose taking formas prows of their own. Thick furrowed brows and dark looks form.
On Isla Coiba, I drew through shark hours when the reefs bled warm:
clouds bulbing over mainland Panama, cotton cream and aqua forms.
Years since, as the storms crawl down in rain rather than snow, wrong
seasons bloom through the doors over my old painting, thunder taking form.
If only I had painted the reefs. Zooxanthellae steam and warm like worms
after a long rain, polyps empty. The Great Barrier crumbles: bleached ghost forms.
If only we could remember that we are not the only creatures who scorn
earth as it is: the damned bees, the termite towers, the trees terraformed.
Under the Amazon delta’s confluence with Atlantic open water swarm
reef fish and sponge water-scrapers, mud-water coral-stacked life-forms.
New microorganisms branch through fracking cracks. The crow-torn
dumpsters invite raccoons and squirrels north. In old mines, ponds form.
Gray scumble scrambles the mountain spine into sky: the storm’s
last gasps, or summer fires starting months early, the year deformed?
The earth blossoms from cloud, until it doesn’t anymore.
Let us pray. Let this not be the only place where life has formed.
Bridget Menasche is a graduate student at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She loves all bacteria that don’t live on her kitchen counters; painting dead things; and humming over cancer cells. Her work can also be found in Fiddleblack, PANK, Parcel, and the Adroit Journal.
One Big Shoe is New York-based playwright and street photographer Sean Pomposello. Specializing in the stolen moment, One Big Shoe’s candid glimpses of the New Yorkers he encounters serve as a character development tool for his dramatic work, which has been recognized by theatres and festivals nationwide. With a background in television and advertising, One Big Shoe brings a love of aesthetics, a keen interest in street stories and the ability to identify and chronicle drama in the everyday.