frog poem

By Pamela Wax

enough lamentation. i’m done

brooding on my brother’s last

phone message and gruesome

end, done romanticizing us

thick and clichéd as thieves,

when we were both too young

to know anyone who’d steal

their own life. i’m moving on

to new material—a frog poem

without mention of suicide

or sleeping pills that guard

my derailments in the dark.

this poem boasts panoramic vision

and features no self-recrimination.

i’m taking on a well-camouflaged

creature who packs ultrasonic cries

inaudible to human ears and neither

resembles nor incriminates

brother or self. rather, i portray

a glistening cold-water vertebrate

who can enter a state of torpor

and remain inactive for months

during extreme conditions. what

i’m writing is tail-less,

an only child with no siblings,

no need for trigger warnings,

nor any attempts to mimic

a low-pitch vibrato

croaking i love you into a phone,

before asking forgiveness

for prehistoric wrongs. my poem

concerns a frog facing extinction.

i’m thrilled to report how

my utterly new material exploits

an unprecedented ecological niche:

it is amphibious, able to breathe

in heaven, underwater, as well

as on earth. it concerns a handsome

would-be prince of a frog, long-legged,

accomplished at jumping, who enters

limbo from the Skyway Bridge, and sticks

the landing with his webbed hind feet.

About the Author

Pamela Wax is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have received two Best of the Net nominations and awards from Crosswinds, Paterson Literary Review, Poets’ Billow, Oberon, and the Robinson Jeffers Tor House. Some of her other publications include Barrow Street, Tupelo Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Chautauqua, The MacGuffin, Nimrod, Mudfish, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Epiphany, and Slippery Elm. An ordained rabbi, Pam offers spirituality and poetry workshops online and around the country. She lives in the Northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.