whether is the source or confirmation
of this memory. Only the papery, gray-green
streaks of road dust on the canes, a bowl
of chipped porcelain inside of which
were raspberries. Very red, very sweet, furred
like my friend’s upper lip I remember
between my teeth as we stood
on the docks. The smell
of iron and winter mist, her mouth
like nothing I have tasted since.
WHEN IT IS OVER, IT WILL BE OVER
pen and ink reproduction by Troy Passey of a line by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Hurricane of what must be
only feeling, the painting’s
sentence circling to black
on blank, ever-
tightening spiral
of words collapsing
to their true gesture: meaning
what we read
when not reading,
as the canvas buckles
in the damp: freckled
like the someone
I once left sleeping
in a hotel room to swim
the coast’s cold shoals, fine veils
of sand kicked up by waves where
I found myself enclosed
in light: sudden: bright
tunnel of minnows
like scatterings of
diamond, seed pearl whorled
in the same
thoughtless thought
around me: one column of scale
turning at a moment’s decision,
a gesture I
was inside or out
of, not touching but
moving in
accord with them: they
would not wait for me, thickening
then breaking apart as I slid
inside, reading me
for threat or flight by the lift
of my arm, as all
they needed to know
of me was in the movement:
as all this sentence
breaks down to O’s and I’s,
the remnants of someone’s
desires or mine so that
no matter whether I return
to that cold coast, they will
never be there: the minnows
in their bright spiraling
first through sight, then
through memory,
the barest
shudderings of sense:
O and I
parting the mouth with a cry
that contains—
but doesn’t need—
any meaning.
LETTER FROM THE PRIBILOFS
Elizabeth Beaman to her sister,
Pribilof Islands, July 13, 1880
Blunt, bullying, this season’s bachelors climb
the rocks near Nah Speel, sleek backs blackening
the waters inside their seacatchy. The old
bulls line up in rows as at a burlesque
house, while their matkas roll in surf, thrash
upon the parade ground’s volcanic sands
turned glassy from the constant passing of seals.
One by one the bulls slip the line to claim
their females, each dragging his choice to a private
catch, as the bull gathers what he can,
the matka cuffed and bitten on the throat
if she struggles, the bull shaking her, banging
her down upon the rock until she rolls
her belly up, blank eyes wet in supplication.
This is how I imagine it. The event being
“no sight a lady should witness,” the Senior
Agent forbids me from the rookeries; John,
my husband now these thirteen months,
must privately describe it. Libby, he tells me,
you should see how soulful they are, it is
amazing to watch them weep. He takes joy
in their human qualities, recalls tales
of selkies who turned to seal-like girls
in surf, braiding their hair in seaweed plaits
to chain an errant sailor’s legs. And yet,
