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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