Every wall is a sea wall, built to keep out
something that is already inside,
running through our veins.
My ship has come in, hold full
of the Jesus fish I’m returning
to their native parables.
We’ve all forgotten how to migrate,
though our ancestors the trees
were clearly transhumant,
and even now have a yearly
jubilee for their leaves.
This leave-taking is my gospel
and there are undersea forests of kelp
that have yet to hear it. They rock
and roll—it is said—all night long.
Their every surface is a tongue
free of Pentecost. They are precious
in the eyespots of echinoderms,
who have cultivated great detachment
and learned how to regrow themselves
from a single, severed limb.
With this kind of movable feast,
who needs the state and its miserable
no-fly lists! Are we not birds?
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- A Week of Kindness
- Herbaceous
- Crushed
- Breast Man
- Manic Pixie Dream Consultant
- Lord of Misrule
- Lilium martagon
- Cat Person
- Escape Artist
- Provincial
- Black site
- Love Machine
- Lionheart
- The Song of the Womb
- Fallen Woman
- Postmortem
- Floating World (Ukiyo)
- Insomniac’s Revenge
- Travel Anxiety
- What Does the Shadow Know?
- Exile
- Desecration
- Bubbly
- The Comeback Kid
- Outside-in
- Sequestered
- White Lady
- Invested
- Mater
- Blow
- Submission
- Biofeedback
- Public Servant
- Executive
- Specialist
- Officialdom
- Prayer Warriors
- Bitter End
- Riparian
- Cabaret
- Accommodation
- Treedom
- Livid
- Flood Watch
- Iemanja
- Imprisoned
- Downward Mobility
- Sirenity
- Somniloquy
- Master Debaters
- Helene