Allies
Care Taking
Dear Gravity [Shall I Call You Shiva?]
Early Autumn
Eight Ways of Looking at a Man-Kite
Firefly Season
Horse Latitudes
Portrait of Regret as a Door-to-Door Salesman
Stealers
Testing
The Birth of Athena
The Cedar
The Snow Catches Up
Transmutation
Waves
What I’ll Tell My Great-Great-Granddaughters
White Horses
Horse Latitudes
Carolyn Oliver
Above the crib, a broadside, the only words
to read in the room where you will not sleep.
An accounting of Trafalgar, jagged vertebrae
listing men, guns, ships taken, burnt, destroyed,
escaped. Did these few slip smoky into friendly ports,
break their shells against the rocks, groan home to rot?
Or did they drift south, into the horse latitudes
where mast-high men vanish in the haze
windless sails wilt, long-taloned thirst finds a perch
in every throat, and still the salt sun rises,
merciless. Calming and becalmed in your hot room,
boards creaking, nerve-knots fraying, your cannonball
weight aching my arms, I calculate how I’d fare
below deck, count the hours until the wary sailors
hammock-swaddle me, slip me overboard, gift
for the fish that rip flesh, the ones that lick bone.
And you? You’re the kind to swallow a person whole.
See how you’ve made of me a Jonah, cradling my whale,
charting us safe passage through the depths, where jellyfish
sway like drowning horses’ manes, and sting like love.
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to read in the room where you will not sleep.
An accounting of Trafalgar, jagged vertebrae
listing men, guns, ships taken, burnt, destroyed,
escaped. Did these few slip smoky into friendly ports,
break their shells against the rocks, groan home to rot?
Or did they drift south, into the horse latitudes
where mast-high men vanish in the haze
windless sails wilt, long-taloned thirst finds a perch
in every throat, and still the salt sun rises,
merciless. Calming and becalmed in your hot room,
boards creaking, nerve-knots fraying, your cannonball
weight aching my arms, I calculate how I’d fare
below deck, count the hours until the wary sailors
hammock-swaddle me, slip me overboard, gift
for the fish that rip flesh, the ones that lick bone.
And you? You’re the kind to swallow a person whole.
See how you’ve made of me a Jonah, cradling my whale,
charting us safe passage through the depths, where jellyfish
sway like drowning horses’ manes, and sting like love.