Jude Marr | Water Divination for Beginners | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

Jude Marr (he, they) is a Pushcart-nominated trans poet, editor and teacher. His poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently Ghost City, Cutleaf, and Masculinity: An Anthology of Modern Voices. Jude’s first collection, We Know Each Other By Our Wounds, came out in 2020 from Animal Heart Press and he loved the press so much that he now works with them as a managing editor. Jude is currently guest-editing a folio, Tender Masculinities, for Purple Ink Press and plotting a move to Portugal.

Jude Marr's Website

Also by Jude Marr: We Know Each Other By Our Wounds A Meditation on States of Emergency Three Poems

January 22, 2025

Jude Marr

Water Divination for Beginners

brown water churns under the iron bridge at the edge of town, muddy and unaccountable: a fish mouth gapes: a greasy slick flashes rainbow this river’s man-channeled, trapped between sparse banks, between smeared brick walls: the churn’s a creature, febrile in captivity stick people pause on the bridge and look down: they see themselves reflected in each tangle of branches, in each floating huddle of trash under the bridge, a faceless child stands on a narrow ledge: a life- raft drifts by, oarless: echoes of persistent rain: a fiery sky, deflected the child squats, froglike, reaching: their fingers drift through rainbow trash until one hooked finger finds the gaping fish, hauls it on land.

I am a child of the city, and this poem began as a mash-up of backstreet waterways I have known: those rivers and canals that run sluggishly between old, stained brick and stone, abandoned and derelict; also, those swifter small-town waterways that once turned mill wheels but have since been superceded by newer technology. But water is elemental, not manufactured. Water is not of the city. We humans are drawn to water, however turgid. We need water. We fear water. We try and fail to control it, to own it. This poem ends as an exploration of that relationship.