from Ballast
and then what?
this ship deranges the sea
every break and swell is rupture in mosaic/
every step in anticipation of ordinance
a black-on-black collage of refusal
we cry out to salt
home in the non-place of non-being
beseech black ligature of wave
to build us a new commons
move away from the dire selection of elective drowning
we do not rejoice in invasion preference or re-brand of prison logic
we are black along a breach axis property
birthed enormous/
uterine warehouse in a universe of escalation
bullet hold the lash for when it see us
chimerical warden of the borderlands/
willing architect of an obliterating literature
we keep time within a flagellated firmament of skull/
beloved bone woven into ancestral garments
both of and to protect from a lacerating chronology
***
broken from out the middle/
combined:
our mouths be the o
in cog
love in us:
mechanized
bruise
then blemish
kept and bled
supremacy
black
and then
blacker still
***
to be a body
tied to season
is to be
a glitched wilderness/
bent catalog of escape
to be
out from an outerself
in the burrow
in the tunnel
between tunnels
we sit
a mosaic of self-theft
ear to walls of wood and dirt
to hear the secret language of cold salt
to echo louder than our cost
pressed in calm cursive
***
and then what?
i beg within
grammar
for a price
bent bodies
form languid/
illegible calligraphy
i write the field open
while buried beneath it
while harried inside it
banging on monied stalk
florid/
fragrant
sack of labor
we write the ocean over
end of wave
end of rotten hull
the last thing
salt sees
ballast
big with sinew
lithe and gone
***
Photograph of Quenton Baker by Dean Davis.
