A Green & Rose Roundelay
By: Sam Kerbel
Late at night cleaning the kitchen
The last pan is a real sore
I’d rather slide its palm through my skull
Than wet my coraled hands again
But then I remember my daughter dancing
To a distant music
And all is right as rain
Which saddens her deeply
A flotilla of women set their anchors
At the distant shore of anger
Their cries so rare as to hardly
Be taken seriously
One mustn’t be so often
So closed in praise
My heart is the sword
On an island of misadventure
Yours is the balm which makes
Swords amenable
Moving in like when an old song
Feels new again
And all is right before the fire
If the martyrs knew how their young went about
They would suffer worse
So we bite our lips & lay beneath the fronds
Laid in the eternity
Of remembering youth
Paradise is rife with such sadness
But a sadness rightly placed
Let the anchor down
Our glass-bottomed chariot
Will chart us through
Celestial plains
Into moonless mountains
Numberless as marble breasts
In sunken galleries
Lit from above
By the gold teeth of the rich
A glass of milk awaits you
On the other side
Of that bullet
Sam Kerbel's first chapbook, Can't Beat the Price (2025), is available from Bottlecap Press. He was shortlisted for the 2024 Oxford Poetry Prize.