It seems
impossible—
not just a
ship in a
bottle but
wind and sea.
The ship starts
to struggle—an
emergency of the
too realized we
realize. We can
get it out but
not without
spilling its world.
A hammer tap
and they’re free.
Which death
will it be,
little sailors?
—Kay Ryan
Kay Ryan’s The Best of It: New and Selected Poems won a Pulitzer Prize in 2011; that same year, she was also awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
