Emerging from the Muck

if they say we have come from
oceanic witnesses
then who am i to differ

we who are land and battle
no longer remember
white caps, the pelagic suffering

...

say goodbye to the fog and smoke
this lingering sadness of lung
not say and want to mean it
even the tundra blossoms
seeds blanketed in ice
like you, a tiny frozen thing
the wind carves into days
makes a stab at the heart
this thrush
sea foam and asphalt

...

there is a silicon pouch where my heart used to be
i call her bitch to show her i don’t miss her
she calls me things too terrible to mention

i do not want to talk myself out of this or any other
calamity i warn the sand crabs about
such linguistic solutions the way my father
warned me but he was oceanographic and I know
that sailors are not easily lured
by tongue scratchy barnacle
that remote

...

the source of our malice for sea life is clear
if you remember the turbulence of amniotic fluid

even the otter has questionable ethics
you can’t trust anything that eats on its back

either in or out of water it is hard
to imagine humans surviving much of anything

go ahead, submerge your hands in the black water of the spillway
to feel any affection for that which no longer reaches the sea

...

the competition between salt and sky cannot dazzle
hawk or dissuade us from our battles with atmosphere
the nuclear cloud of memory is prehistoric knowledge, is deep water
we surface by burning prairie grass and pygmy rabbit
drawing the smoke up into ourselves
when night falls we are still damp from hatching
the crickets warn of the moon’s entanglements
a towering monument overshadowing rock and river
we are woman and ox, our legs a muscular paradise of blue

...

to cross time is not
to mark its curvature
but its scales
the crepuscular death
of iridescent things opening
in this moment which has happened
has not happened
not exactly brilliant but lingering
we make months of ourselves
weeks take days call it luck or sarsaparilla
the past has no referent but scent
sweet is not unlike bitter when you bite down on it
a hummingbird is such a femme thing
but she can hurt you too

...

some say writing is thinking and others call it sinking into not action as if thought and action were disassociated, as if ex lovers at a party who can’t even smile across the room at each other nine years of fighting and sex, studying the drama of each other’s family and now they are caught in a crowded room and despite their knowledge that each has lost, they will not speak, neither will, because the lesson they learned most clearly, if anyone bothered to ask, is we are fish out of water this cannot be solved by thought or action or the pretense of either, this story which asks you to do something for god sake, or is it think something and maybe that will be enough

...

the sea is such longing for
its young, dawn, that pocked beauty
we have switched our alliance
made family out of desert
desiccant, this relative of
thirsty enough to swallow
our rage, her mouth, spitting out
cactus and scree, impervious to the hunger
wrinkled sheaths of skin

...

one way to explain it is the tree
those skinny roots stabbing into volcanic rock
the first thing to grow isn’t always pretty
the limbs are barren sticks
there are no flowers or fragrant music
it is simply phloem and xylem
emerging from the crust
an igneous womb

...

this morning is not the witch’s tit that you spoke of. so many disastrous women or so the story goes. there are others who claim not to notice the circumstance of sex. I call them liars but I know enough never to do this to their face. the earth as mother is a tragedy of subjugation and resistance. twenty miles away dawn is met by a concrete freeway overpass where she wakes, her body some broken antique toy. some parts move noisily. the others time has frozen in place. go ask her what woman means, mother or pleasure or garbage strewn contiguously so that no one place is either landfill or pristine. not containment or contaminant but that which bears the brunt of it, some dark once furry place between her legs.

...

in the beginning people said all kinds of things
which later someone took for religion
but the first words were not about god but food
then sex i know because i’ve been hungry
god has nothing to do with it
when the ocean comes and reclaims us
a few will survive, they will eat and make babies
this is my story and god is not allowed
only tangerines and sailor girls
there will be no more babies either