Carmen Fought

Observer’s Paradox

When I was eight I watched my cousin
get hit by lightning.
                                   It felt like
I made it happen.
Lightning
                  drew on him: Lichtenberg figures
the startling henna, a map of his veins.

Everyone who looked at him
could see his blood,
                  could follow where it went.

If people pray it makes me
                           uneasy, but the statue
of the virgin of Guadalupe
with plastic flowers
                                       at her feet
comforts me. So on my walks
I stop for her.

A woman walks in pain, you can tell
by her gait.
                             I can’t describe it to you
but I could watch her for hours.

If the woman watches
                                        lightning boy
sleeping does his dream change?

If she looks at a plaster virgin
will she be
                             healed? Can she
make his blood run backward
                              to the source,
back up the scrolling patterns
to his electric heart?

---

Swimming Lessons at the Y

The inside curve of her ear
was a pink as cool as a lie
when she came out
of the water, a pink
that whispered hush, a slide
to a dangerous pink pool. I was 12
and I knew that someday
she would give it away, with less
thought than a lady putting
coins in the bus slot, not
missing them, not imagining
how someone could slip
desperate fingers in after,
trying to get one shining
quarter back as the men shuffled
past in a sweaty knot
and the dog-tired driver laughed

---

Carmen Fought is a Professor of Linguistics who teaches at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. She is the author of several books on language and identity, most recently Language and Gender in Children’s Animated Films (2022, Cambridge University Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Lascaux Review, Driftwood Anthology, Gyroscope Review, Halfway Down the Stairs and the collection Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review 2021.