i am full of dead. pink and white boats slit
my wrists, ferry women crying behind their fists,
hating their sick sons back to health.
i transport secretaries blackmailing the middling powerful,
i walk my bridges with seagull feet, suicidal.
language submerges me,
drowns without care
my every syllable. i am full of dead.
the tides know, the drowned and the dead live in me.
first the fish eat the water, what of life throbs and dwells
in water;
then another fish eats it,
then another eats it,
then a shark eats the fish,
or a whale does
or a bigger fish
generally a bigger fish
sometimes a whale sometimes a man.
first the fish eats the water,
the small and multiplying forces in the water;
in time the water will eat the man.
i eat them all in time:
the tides know, the tides remember.
i am full of dead. dolphins swim in me,
rare flickers of jewel brightness. tourists
sell me painfully to other tourists. i am full of dead.
after me there will be nothing: only a hill,
only a vase overturned. i am full of life,
i steal light from light to
multiply it into long dusks, i construct paragraphs
on bad foundations, i stink.
Maria Duran is an art historian from Lisbon, Portugal. Her literary work has been published with Helvética Press, Gilbert & Hall Press, Black Moon Magazine, and Querencia Press, among others.
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