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Another featured poem from Antonia’s book To Make a Bridge, the second in our Poem a Day for Poetry Month series

 

The Contents of the Cabinet of Fame

 

1. A copper man (frozen

forever) swings

his fishing rod of twig’n’twine

towards a non-existent lake.

 

2. Two pick-up trucks carved

from the timber a real one

transported. Bruno claims

if you jump, rattle shelving,

the toys will rock on oak

tires—unsettled wheels turn.

 

3. With palms twisted

outward in porcelain

holiness, a Madonna

roll-calls twin mothers

stationed at bedsides,

atop doorframes, the bare

soles of her feet kissing

a white, unpainted snake.

 

4. A dusty rock, once beached

in the sand of Sicilian shorelines.

 

5. A wooden doll roughly chiseled

into being: vertical grooves imitate

hair, the skirt a solid cone of pine.

 

6. An amber-stained kitten, moulded

from ceramic: Dad’s grade 13 art project.

 

7. Zi’Renata’s wooden-beaded

rosary jailed in a static circle.

 

8. Framed faces: cousins

gripping the green skin

of a snake-shaped zucchini,

ripe and ready for cookin’,

saltin’, eatin’.

 

9. A miniature shoe, timeless

footwear—silver, jewelled

with rhinestones that crimson light.