The rumor of a lost kite pinioned to wrack,
a rudderless vessel come unmoored
and caught on a reef, banquet for lobsters
and octopi that themselves snag
inside the screens and die. If this
then how many others pulled down
like shame into blossoming rot?
The sea lays captive in it, blue acres
like trapped sky still flexing
with a current’s slow pivots,
a year’s salt churning inside remnants
of a blowfish. Distended kelp bladders choke
down into the wrested underside
of paradise, hanging gardens
of albacore, dolphin, innumerable
silt around the tanks, like petrified lungs,
of two divers long ago tangled down.
Frank Gallimore lives and works as a sign language interpreter in Seattle. He is also the editor of Kiss-Fist Magazine. His poems have appeared in Slate, Measure, The Cimarron Review, Verse Daily, and Smartish Pace.
