I'd lean close, my ear to her whisper and roar, her tongue scattered with stars. She'd belt her brassy voice over the waves' backbeat. No one sings better than her. Would she ever bite the inside of her cheek? Would she yell at the moon to quit tugging at her hem, or would she whistle, drop her blue dress and shimmy through space to cleave to that shimmer? What did she mean to say that morning she spit out the emaciated whale wearing a net for a corset? All this emptying on the sand. Eyeless shrimp. Oiled pelicans. Within her jaws the coral forests, glittering fish, waves like teeth, her hungry mortal brine.
Copyright © 2014 by Marie-Elizabeth Mali. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on March 26, 2014. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
The Octopus offers me one of his three hearts,
briar and holly for friendship the second and third
saved for times of longing, times of loss.
A strange romance, I admit—
Friends would never approve or believe,
yet he was untouched by human hands.
How can we say this is not a source of wonder—
“Who will sing my song, if not you?” he asked.
“Who will dream of me, as I lay under the stillness of water?”
Even an Octopus can be eloquent, and then again,
as we know, enormous need can become power.
What am I supposed to do now?
I stand by the water,
my woolen dress unraveling in the waves.
From What the Psychic Said by Grace Cavalieri, published by Goss183. Copyright © 2020 by Grace Cavalieri.
What does it mean to be so still? to glide along the ocean floor like some black-tongued electric eel, to burn through marbled gold and green of oceanic things like some compact mass deforming space, time, a void within voids, and then? It is easier to imagine amphibian, to know that blood, too, can change its temperament as quickly as salamanders change skin, as quickly as eyes of newt and tongues of dog become incantations, enchantments of art and life just as an animal submerged under water becomes unknown, just as respirations become primitive and breaths and motions cease as a lone fish in a dark pond arrives as an object of thought and becomes stone.
Copyright © 2017 by Rita Banerjee. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on November 30, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
when the tide
of silence
rises
say “ocean”
then with the paddle
of your tongue
rearrange
the letters to form
“canoe”
Copyright © 2020 by Craig Santos Perez. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 22, 2020 by the Academy of American Poets.
the beach at sunrise
raises its skirts
like a drunken pigeon
i raise my eyes awake
behind armored gates
somewhere deep in frederiksted
inside dark rooms
that shroud my skin
in the colors
of an evening gone bad
bluest black
rinsed indigo
uncensored red
dark nameless woman
washed ashore
skin seared
like an eclipse
out of season
warm water
nips under my
breast
seeps into my skin
and the ocean whispers
stay close
stay close
i strut red feathers like a pagan god
open my house boldly
invite sun and waves to crush my wings
rape this serenity
bluest black
rinsed indigo
uncensored red
i surrender
to the messages in the sky
on the waves
i eat my own blood
reach quietly inside the water
gather all of me
alongside myself
and the ocean whispers
stay close
stay close
an earlier version
of sunrise
teases the curtains
teases the whiteness of sheets
that gather around my ankles
that remind my feet to breathe
an earlier version
of sunrise
sits cross-legged
holds thunder
captive under skirts
that deny
full moons
that deny
seasons of fire
thy deny
births and names
st croix mornings
gaze back at me
through the eyes
of my daughter
remind me
of other madnesses
other unnamed seeds
the madness of the sky
the madness of a woman
who refuses to
stay close
stay close
From Breath of the Song: New and Selected Poems (Carolina Wren Press, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Jaki Shelton Green. Used with the permission of the poet.
Walking backward from the sea, scales shedding, you seek the cave. This is why the French door admits only ocean. You stare into the louver and forget how to get out. Lull is the word, or loll. The sea returns, completing your pulse, the waves live, each breath of yours worship.
From So Much Things To Say: 100 Calabash Poets, edited by Colin Channer and Kwame Dawes. Copyright © 2010 by Terese Svoboda. Used with permission of Calabash International Literary Trust and the author.
Inside us the ocean
sways like a cradle
in which we rock rock
and are drawn like the tide
to the moon twice a day
we carry our water and it carries us
we are a good pail with legs
foot by foot on the turning
mountain of the world
water walking on the prairie
walking water on the road
up the stairs through a door
where the view rushes out of us
through the window to the woods
rushing water in the desert
rushing water in this chair
and that one you’re in
water walking
and what is solid is not at all
what we thought the rock
worn away by the rocking
Copyright © 2016 by Wyatt Townley. From Rewriting the Body (Stephen F. Austin Press, 2018). Originally published in Prairie Schooner. Used with permission of the author.