Dina Folgia

We Could Have Been a Lake

I threw a crabapple into the water once
and it sank heavy. 

I imagined it a sun like those suns
in great books of science
whose weight is shown
by how it sags
the space around it.

Do you know the ones?
Those diagrams that show planets
sinking like supermarket fruit
into a sack of mesh,
stretching it?

The water knit
and held it so the fish
could swarm, those
kissing, reeking fish. 

We could have been a lake
and had our apple,

such little to hold
and less to cradle.

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Dina Folgia is a queer poet, author and educator. Her work, which has been nominated for Best of the Net, Pushcart and the AWP Intro Journals Project, has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Salamander, Cherry Tree, Gigantic Sequins, Four Way Review, Ninth Letter Web Edition, Foglifter and others. She received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she served as the poetry editor of Blackbird. She teaches creative writing at VCU and The College of William & Mary.