Vox Populi
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Molly Fisk: Maybe I’ll Just Sing To Him
Cleavage
Glancing at photos of a new movie star:
award shows, lovely dresses, not the tiny body
so prevalent, I feel a little disloyal
focusing on anything but her clear gaze.
Still I can’t help noticing the blue gown
open in a shallow vee framing the edges
of that country where our breasts meet
if we still have two and she does.
An illustrator will draw these lines
where flesh meets itself symmetrical,
but nature bows to no one, swerves and banks
like a cliff swallow packing its mud nest
between the struts of a bridge, insists
on beauty in variety, inequitable.
As the planned flaw in a woven blanket
banishes hubris or lets mischief out,
her breasts greet each other unevenly.
The detail, easy to overlook amid so much pomp
and celebration, is quietly profound. The body
alive and itself, even here. Not a mirror.
~~~
Maybe I’ll Just Sing to Him
I don’t know, something about how we live
the sun streaming in and striping the cat,
and his green-gold eyes opening, his black
velvet coat, the quality of light as we enter
winter, its golden cast, its preciousness.
Whether my brother is going to die this time
or not. What I could possibly say.
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Molly Fisk
Molly Fisk’s many books include a collection of humorous essays Naming your Teeth. Her book of linked poems set in 1875, Walking Wheel, is forthcoming in March, 2026 from Red Hen Press.
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These are so beautiful and human. Both poems soar without hubris grounded in the stripes of light on a black cat and in the cleavage of a movie star, wonderfully asymmetrical. I love Molly Fisk’s eye and mind.
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I do too, Mary.
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Beautiful. Quiet. Sad. Oh!
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Thank you so much for your kind words, everyone! I love what you saw and felt, and hearing responses always makes me want to keep writing, the best gift you could give me. Jim, I have loved that Lucille Clifton poem for a long time. Michael/Mike, so many thanks, again.
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Thank YOU, Molly, for your beautiful poems.
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After enjoying the poem Cleavage, I happened to read a brief essay on the poetry of Lucille Clifton that included this couplet from Clifton’s poem lumpectomy eve:
all night it is the one breast
comforting the other
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Lovely to read these poems after reading with Molly Fisk (virtually) & other Sheila-Na-Gig contributors last week. I found her work arresting then, so I’m grateful to read her work so soon after.
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Sounds like a lot of fun, Ellen!
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You know, Mike? Sometimes you read a poem like “Cleavage” and you are struck by how a superior sensibility like Molly Fisk’s simply *notices *things that one may (innocently or perhaps too often otherwise) have seen but never thought of in such stunningly original fashion. This one bowls me over in that respect.
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Me too, Syd. I’m in awe of Molly’s gifts. She makes it look easy to write a great poem.
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I love Fisk’s mixture of visual imagery, with her profound inspection of boundaries: between two-breasted cleavages, pomp and quiet, life, oh sweet life, and death. Molly Fisk woke me up today to nature’s swerves and inequitableness. If there are flaws in the poem, I can’t see them.
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Beautifully said, Jim. Thank you!
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Love Molly Fisk’s work.
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Usually I read the poems before the essays, but today I read the essay first and could not come up with words to explain the depth of my sadness and horror, the sense of uselessness in the face of so much evil. Thank you for these poems where I could actually find delight in identifying with the quip about those who have two—my personal woes so trivial I had to laugh.
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I know exactly what you mean, Barb.
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I, too, love Molly Fisk’s work & loved reading both poems, slowly & twice. Much to smile at & to applaud. One line/image, for example: “the sun streaming in and striping the cat”— perfection!
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Thanks, Laure-Anne. I agree!
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Thank you both! xo
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I don’t know either Molly Fisk, but you’ve got my eyes and my ears (still have two) and I like what you’re doing to them!
I’m so pleased to be invited to your picnic to hear your song of light.
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Molly is a wonderful poet, and she also writes humorous prose sketches for her weekly radio show. I love her work.
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I, too, am a Molly Fisk fan. “Maybe I’ll Just Sing to Him” takes my breath away.
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Well, I’m also a new Christine Rhein fan. So there!
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Thank you!
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