Myth

Monday I decide to create a river.

Each drop of water is a melted comma;

ocean: the collection of incomplete sentences.

I send my Siren to reside at an island

& sing all the songs that shall be sung,

sink all of me that should be sunken.

If I were Medusa, I would buy myself mirrors

to defeat all my snakes,

to grow feathers, to grow scales,

to become my own stone.

The shore a Greek stage.

I’ve been humping my grammar all my life.

Sometimes my verses rip the ocean open

 – a marine wound

which all lands behold.

I dress my bones, my flesh

with a sheet of skin tattooed with scars

& walk out to pray, to flinch,

to seek the river that stabs into my heart

like a dearest dagger.

2022.7.6