Mag 305

photo by Caroline Knopf

The ocean winks at me as I bathe

in convulsions of turquoise, fully-dressed.

Between the stones and her indigenous tidings

there is no room for my boundaries.

–

Her arms topple and twine,

an embrace desperate for meaning.

–

She is a contradiction in which

epiphanies are rendered malleable,

a requiem unfathomable

but for the bluster of illusions.

–

I never loved her but her paradigm

still comes to me in moments of distress.

I could have been poor and happy

but I chose the accolades of predation.

–

I prefer nonsense to conjecture.

I prefer nonsense to the company of masquerades.

I prefer nonsense to the trial and bother

of my own antipodean sentiments.

–

I dream without sleep’s indulgence

pouring my blood into the open grin of a carafe.

I am never discreet, not even in whisper.

Mine is a continent of infinite discord.

–

I possess and ingest myself

yet the question of my species remains.

What am I? A coffin? A whimsy?

A sheaf of undated manuscripts?

–

Inside where the bones lie

my sutures amend themselves in satin

and the hope, however, grim that my scars

will not overwhelm me.

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