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## Impact

billeh nickerson

From Impact: The Titanic Poems, published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2012. Billeh Nickerson is the author of The Asthmatic Glassblower, Let Me Kiss it Better: Elixirs for the Not So Straight and Narrow and McPoems. He teaches creative writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Surrey, BC.

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IMPACT

One passenger believed it was her husband,

the ship’s jolt just another expression of their love.

Others thought it was an earthquake

or a mishap in the galley—

a runaway trolley, a stack of fallen dishes.

The baker wasn’t sure what happened

though he hoped his loaves would not fall.

While airtight after airtight compartment filled,

a second-class passenger ordered his drink

with chunks from the berg.

A small child sucked pieces of ice

as if they were candies,

and her brothers scraped up snowballs,

their mother worried only

they could lose an eye.

SOMEONE’S LUCKY PENNY

slipped out

of his pocket

and drifted

down

for two

hours

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THE YOUNG WIDOW

Of all the widows, newlywed Mary Marvin

had the unfortunate distinction

of being able to watch

her wedding after the fact,

for her husband’s father owned

a motion picture company

and made theirs the first wedding

filmed for all to see.

Although she would see her eighteen-year-old self

grow older over the years,

her nineteen-year-old groom was forever

on a film loop, never to change.