DAY 21: DANIELLE VOGEL, from SMALL ICELANDIC NOVELS

DANIELLE VOGEL

from Small Icelandic Novels

for angela rawlings

1.

when we are at sea we are suspended

just feet below the air we watch through the wet rim

of the ocean through the green-shouldered waves

we let ourselves be turned we watch the

ways in which the light writes

upon our selves and sisters

a pod of women spines

liquidic with sleep it is our season

of crossing it is always our season

days are passing before the first of us surfaces

we swim to surface us dreaming-women

in nightgowns buoy bellies to the sky

a slow arching into under again

the first night is all nights and we are buoyant

within the bay we are swimming and

we are not swimming within the bay we are writing a pod

of oceanic women sleeping as we swim

we write we are writing

we are writing as we pass our eyes

always closed our lids twitch

with writing our faces relaxed in sleep

our mouths open tongues searching

like the soft foot of a clam

and we turn to deepen whorling

over our nightgowned backs creak where the

pages and covers of books are shingled

along growling like a fibrous exoskeleton

these books bi-valved creatures

 an elongated cone wound on its axis

withdraw all its soft parts into the mouth

 sound-calcites thinly plated upon the teeth leaf-like

crystals shingling the finger bones opalescent

light refracted the memory-tissue of the word

kelp trailed and growing

our density increases until we

are lifting out the sea our density

increases until we are washed up

shore pulling our sleeping forms across

the earth by our hands bellies to

dirt legs drug behind

our density increases until we are

invisible in the darkest parts

of the ocean we are metamorphic icicled

sedimentary blooms

we glacial the tongue

until it is always moving our surface slopes

the air weightless but woolen

our density builds through a stratum

of re-smothering we are subcellular

a slip in perspectives a deformation

of gravity we freeze over and

separate debris as we thaw

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