Bodies In Strange Form, In Sorry Plight
Killed by the warming, yellowed legs
cast about. A heavy surface layer,
a felt of algal growth, far slower along
the shore. A black-eyed child hurries
inside. Humid and lethal, the dark-
haired sediment of a false spring
reintroduces—a longing for tidal
exposure, the shifting appendages
of a rocky shore, the vigor of marine
salt on a sunk cheek keeled home.
Climate Migrant
You are neither one nor the other
but the difference split: human fish.
Forced to flee the clammy comfort
of your cave. The dragon dragged
off. The sky on your wet skin is pink-
white, peeled back. Slip up the sides
of grey poles, think settle-in, sleep now.
This twig home stuck in the cleft fork
of thin saplings, some hollowed out
home—too bright an end.
Desert
The bright light cuts clear through
the cracked crab holding my chest
in place. Its legs, not ribs hold my
heart in. If I were to swim out now
red shanks would have the run of
my body. See giant’s paving stones,
that’s me seeping through the cracks,
granular dust from a foreign future.
No one builds like that now. The sea
creeps closer, a silent clown, impatient
for more silence. It goes over what was—
whatever was becomes less, becomes
killed, until the killer becomes quiet,
and all that is left is dry, and unmade.
