The center of the universe is everywhere. I survive it by focusing on how the sun each morning explodes the hills. I cup my hands over my ears. My blood sounds like an ocean flapping against smooth rocks. Once I reached for a glass water that was actually a glass of vodka. The mouth believes what the throat will not. Gunshots wake the geese. The heart believes what the knees will not. Snow blooms over an empty field. & still I hear a voice. What can be said? The snow persists. The snow turns one thing into another. Once I read about how the world began with shells of dirt, spun through waves of time. I open my mouth to catch the cold in my teeth. I open my mouth like I am sobbing but no sound comes out. Human voices lift the snowy streets. It doesn’t matter if everyone is singing to their own specific god. Everyone is singing.
Self-Portrait as the Rip Current
Bits of boats pile up in the harbor’s corner. Fishhooks
and clam nets bound with seaweed. On boardwalk,
a dropped ice cream gathers gulls in pine branches above.
Flat rocks littered with split shells, wet boardwalk smell,
salt and rot. A pack of weeks jammed into summer.
The half-house stays lit by its own garden swing.
No one sees my stunted limbs, or clothes at half-mast,
my body still willing to float in whatever water. No one
listens when I speak. Only the beach answers when asked—
How many colors of sand? How many motions in the alphabet
of surviving yourself? Only the beach sputtered with trash, the sea’s tongue
sucked and gave back. The river leaks my name to the bay.
