Last Night on the Island

This time I wake alone on that darkened shore
The fire caved in on itself.
I can still hear the ashes gurgling. 

Earlier, the heat was so stifling,
it forced us in. Shedding our clothes
in preparation for the body to meet water.

White caps sung like bones
in a harmonious vibration
crafting erosion
like scrimshaw on Ivory.

Night moved in, our skin glowed
with the sunlight it couldn’t hold onto.
Ocean transformed into sound
and that sound blanketed everything.

I talk about the lotus-eaters.
It seems appropriate since we’re still naked.
But can you imagine that?

Arriving there at the shoreline
of an Ithaca we never even wanted.
What if the lotus was language
and speech its consumption?

I just want the right words for
the way the ocean mixes with sky
how we find ourselves tricked with night.

I’ll stay here until I find them.
There’s the roaring engine of water,
all its myths collapsing on the beach

trying to pull the earth from under us
or us back from it.
That’s all it is. She tells me,

just trying to find some life in all of this
trying to steal weeks back from years.
But now I am alone again.

I think about feeding the fire another log,
but the sky looks so calm from this angle.
Why ruin it with light? And besides,

I’m comfortable sunken into the rock.
A breeze sliding over me,
settling on my bare chest.  

This breathy mist; a song
that I have slipped into or out of
I’m not quite sure.

There is a sweetness to these places
where we hang ourselves
between sleeping and waking.

Flashes of lightning kiss the horizon.
The world blurs itself out again.
I mistake it for sunrise,
the way heat bends air.

Ode to First and Last Cigarette

You tell me about the cadavers.
About their lungs, how after a life 

of breathing, look no different
from that of a chain-smoker’s.

You say this while handing me a cigarette.
The first for both you and I.

It feels antiquated, as if I should inhale
deeply, blow the nicotine-sweet air upwards 

in some whale’s spout, so that when
the smoke clears, we find ourselves 

in another era. But that is not the case.
We are at a campsite, sitting before a fire,

I inhale, cautiously, fearfully, watch you
do the same. Your nose crinkles 

and your belly tightens. You turn away
from your own self-affliction.

One puff. That was what we agreed on.
You toss the cigarette into the flames.

I hesitate, take another drag,
before doing the same.

Physalia physalis

I point and ask my mother
what they were before they died, 

as if death changed their form.
Pulling my gaze from the sea, 

she says she doesn’t know.
The seagulls plunge into shields 

of blue in search of food—minnows,
shrimp, krill. They dive into a wall 

of toxic frills: the man-o-war
spread thin on the beach like jam

on toast. I like to imagine each gull
battle-cried before it dipped, but this 

is just my greed for good
narrative. In reality, the sea 

is starving. It feeds on its’ own
desire for fullness. Even as it claws

from the depths, sets a handshake
on the shore, the hole in its palm

leads to a belly, which leads
deeper still, into another mouth.

Craftsmanship

Begin with the collarbone. Carve it
rugged so that sinews grip on—

hope that if they rip it is not from instability.
Next, make the sternum soft and subtle,

allow the abdominal muscles to cradle
around it: let them roll over the ribs 

like an octopus around a seafloor rock.
Press the hip bone hard and compact.

This is where the core will find its power,
where the sartorius will pull as you swim 

in the Aegean. Next the arms. Pull them taut
and layer them over the shoulder.

Ensure the bulb of the humerus fits snuggly,
wraps around, forming the triceps.

And then, with the remaining ribbons,
tie the knots of the forearm at the base 

of the wrist before chiseling the fingers,
then clench the hand into a fist.

Invocation to Melpomene

Mother of melodies that I don’t understand,
string me a different song. Take siren wings
and fashion them into a lyre worth playing

so that hypnotic twinge of bow and chord
might afford an explanation for how
rivers meet the sea, how hair meets a string

and why that instrument only speaks lament.
I know this is all you have time for
but I am asking for an older song.

Here, in this amphitheater of water
and stone, I merely ask you keep playing
until you find it, dig it out of that muse-less wreckage

the marble quarry I wandered for days
trying to find an echo of what was left behind
half-excavated, half-abandoned, all glimmering 

in the sea-spun daylight of this overwritten tragedy.
We keep rewriting it, add vibratos
and cadenzas that your daughters ignore

as they poise their harpy thighs on the cliffs
jump and swoop towards fish? Or something else?
Play me the song you’d play for them before

they contorted it into shipwrecks
before their names melded with others
before this pneumatic chimera found 

its way out of the body of the lyre
that you sit with now, testing the weight of.
Prepare a wave of song to drown us all.

Photo by Gabriel Almanzar on Unsplash.