The frog (Rana; of the family Ranidae) is disappearing all over the world.
Come back to our dreams with your cold and warty skin
your sideways eyes
your splayed hands clothespin- fingered,
the litheness of your open thighs
ballooning of your singing throat
alarming,
alarming
We knew before the forests came
and went that you were magic.
We’ll look past your crude disguise,
we told you. Fetch the golden ball
and you shall sleep upon our pillows singing
buttercup
buttercup
We wove you in, we made you songs,
mm-hmm, mm-hmm,
We thought you were unpleasant but we did,
mm-hmm,
A prince of a fellow, all in all,
we listened for you spring and fall
mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm
When it was midnight, I held my breath
and kissed him handsome.
He waltzed me to my room.
Outside, under a black and silver sky,
the voices of a thousand frogs
rang like muffled bells.
But who needs the frog
when the prince is underneath?
we asked ourselves,
netting frogs from their dank ponds
by the thousands. We’d hand one,
pickled in formaldehyde,
limp as a potholder,
to any student who’d mine for
the giblet heart, the intestines
rolled neatly as socks in a suitcase.
Such uses they found
for your body, Rana!
We’ve seen what makes you tick.
We know what makes you croak.
And now you answer
with an awful silence.
Please. Don’t go.
We want you back.
We see now what we’ve broken.
We didn’t mean to break it
break it break it. We didn’t
mean to break it.
Winner of the Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize and an Atlanta Review International Publication Prize, this poem first appeared in The Atlanta Review.
—
Charlotte Muse lives in Menlo Park, California. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies. She’s written five chapbooks and a full-length collection, In Which I Forgive the River (Broadstone Books). Recent awards include finalist for the Orchard Street Press Poetry Prize and a nomination for England’s Forward Prizes, both in 2023. She’s also won the Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize, the Allen Ginsberg Award, and the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, among others.
