

Search and rescue
A kind of amnesia is upon me
that supposes the company of poets
safe harbour from loneliness
My gaze alights on each face-
a searchlight misreading waves as hands
reefs as bouys
Here I bob
I didn’t sink
saved by miraculously buoyant mother-breasts
I rose to a surface I barely recognized from land
The ascension was late; the floating body recovered,
limbs intact but not the senses
That’s why my eyes can’t read the room
Every face in the bookstore is an unpronounceable verb in a
tongue I lost twelve years at sea to sinking nouns
house car table bed
I’m all stubs, shark torn
treading and eating salt
growing oceans
I want the gulls to be gulls
clouds to carry rain, not portents
faces to be faces not possibilities
so I let my gaze slide
throw my chest to the sky
ribs a victory, precious air recovered
from stolen sips at the surface of that world
and breathe myself back into existence.
I despise the desire that someone inhale me
You don’t know the space I’ll fill
once all this useless oxygen is gone