Self-Portrait as Baby Albatrosses

after watching Chris Jordan’s Albatross, part of the Midway Project



by Kimberly Brandolisio





We are here.

Inside this circle of black ink

on the abandoned map,

just under the second i in Pacific Ocean.

Even our remote island has become suburban:

tainted by coal dust, plastic waste, oil slick

spread of the city and haunted—

               the passenger pigeon

               the dodo

               the great auk

               the red rail

               the laughing owl



ad infinitum.

So many the sky is dark with ghosts instead

of industrial smoke and car exhaust

and albatrosses. Each tide brings in the next

plastic delivery, each wind wafts the smell of decay,

because they turned even our carcasses into neon signs,

advertising death in bottlecap red and fishing net

green and toothbrush yellow.

There is a museum of spent cigarette lighters

and golf balls in our soft bellies.

The beach sand is littered

with decomposing nests of feather and bone,

shotgun shell and candy wrapper

that stuff us with starvation and render

us unable to fly, floating

until death sweeps us in with the tide,

feathers water-darkened,

body bent so feet and beak and wings

all point towards the ocean.





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