Josephine quarterly｜fall 2018
trances of the atlantic
The vocals of the sea inch closer.
At night their stillness continues
and only Andromeda can be seen.
The East extends indefinitely in this way.
What we thought contained multitudes
we found to be instead
one thing: not East.
In the way our experience of history
is: not now.
We enter its greenness
and are pushed back changed
together with the stars
and the oldest life, we turn slowly
and lend ourselves back to earth
with our stories
in a cold comprehensible only
as fourth degree burn.
All that we touch
now is artifact.
And here, we are so near the stars
my one leg becomes two, my one hand three –
our bodies in the cold behave as light
and if there is a color to the dark it is green
green as the sea that brought us here.