If the ocean had a mouth
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.