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The water is ok, Jennye says, sprawled on the shore
having not yet touched the water. Everybody looks out at the ocean and has a Thought. I was a mollusk closed and riding foam, I beached this inlet’s other side, under rotting piers once walkways to the moon. Now smeared with hopelessness, blood of fish. Salted inside the ruin of Dreamland, piles of sunflower seeds, meatless, cleaved wet and littering the sand. Me and my leonine lover in neon amusement light, he brushed my hair behind my ear, loose. I knew I was a girl I opened then and have been open ever since, pearlless purse, powerful with emptiness. Women wade in two by two, topless, adorned in chains. Beauty, I remember, is trading one truth for another. You have a Russian soul, Polina insists as we sour cherry our afternoon. (vishny) frozen, pitted, our soviet estrangement. Sugared one colander full of frozen berries not plucked from low dark trees since our season’s over. Flour over all flat surfaces rolling scrap dough, Dipping one finger in red water we sealed each purse. I die to look at women. How many alphabets obliterate pre-lingual self? English vowels fill up my purse with foreignness-- tongue down to knuckle —new embankment. All dykes an island. All mountains touch under Measureless Darkness. have known, have loved, have stood in place, turned stone. Sainted animal, wounded hoof, living in hovel of my companionship. Resist healing wholly lest in healing we forget. Some vareniki float, not all seals, as lovers, survive boiling water. “My love, call me Sasha,” Alejandra wrote. Never had a lover use a name that has power over me. Polina skims the surface collects the salvage. What was it like to be cared for? Sometimes, knowing what won’t be enough is enough. |
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