Impact
billeh nickerson
From Impact: The Titanic Poems, published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2012. Billeh Nickerson is the author of The Asthmatic Glassblower, Let Me Kiss it Better: Elixirs for the Not So Straight and Narrow and McPoems. He teaches creative writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC.
IMPACT
One passenger believed it was her husband,
the ship’s jolt just another expression of their love.
Others thought it was an earthquake
or a mishap in the galley—
a runaway trolley, a stack of fallen dishes.
The baker wasn’t sure what happened
though he hoped his loaves would not fall.
While airtight after airtight compartment filled,
a second-class passenger ordered his drink
with chunks from the berg.
A small child sucked pieces of ice
as if they were candies,
and her brothers scraped up snowballs,
their mother worried only
they could lose an eye.
SOMEONE’S LUCKY PENNY
slipped out
of his pocket
and drifted
down
for two
hours
THE YOUNG WIDOW
Of all the widows, newlywed Mary Marvin
had the unfortunate distinction
of being able to watch
her wedding after the fact,
for her husband’s father owned
a motion picture company
and made theirs the first wedding
filmed for all to see.
Although she would see her eighteen-year-old self
grow older over the years,
her nineteen-year-old groom was forever
on a film loop, never to change.