Two Poems by Jane Zwart

The King’s Hobby

As a prince, he played: the ponies, the piano.

He ran gauntlets, bred ferrets, penned sonnets.

Phoebes were his hobbies, and Hollies. Archery,

basketry, casuistry, daiquiris–before his reign,

the king wore out an abecedarium of fun.

But because a monarch must sit, aloof,

toasting the joust and praising the roast,

and gout doesn’t count as a hobby,

his majesty specialized, at last, in sighs:

a sigh as sharp as an arrow, a sigh as deep

as a creel, a stage sigh just like a tragedienne’s

when her lap is forsworn for a throne.

Off Season

A furnace sifts the arcade games

with dust--the plexiglass lids on PacMan

machines, the coin-pushers’ trays

in cheap vitrines; they wait on May,

on neon and strobes to transform

the silt they wear to glitter. Off season,

the workers winter inland: soda jerks

and sommeliers, lifeguards given back

to their pallor.

Only the chains stay

open. No one smells of coconut. Everyone

wears shoes. Ice cream comes

in a single flavor, demoted to a la mode.

Off-season, the sherbet-colored cottages

look preposterous. Every year, in one

the pipes burst. Every year, the pier converts

into an open-air hair supply

for wizards too green to grow beards.

The locals who stay walk dogs in sweaters

and think loneliness too urgent a word.

Jane Zwart teaches at Calvin University, where she also co-directs the Calvin Center for Faith & Writing. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and Ploughshares.