A bottom-lit sea...
       

A bottom-lit sea ponders the lake's questions,
their secret conversations
thatch howls to whimpers exhaled
from an isthmus of drowned wolves.

Its glossary's cataclysms
smoothed over the hatchet
tucked into a sheath of starlight
locates fractures potted in cisterns of smog.

The stitching then unthreads
to muzzled worms pulsing
where an arsonist begins to lather heat over his neck.

Backlit by a caravan of wailing fathers
he silences their smeared faces
while kneeling in an arbor of mesh and steel.

                    Nowhere streams in blips and beeps under them.

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Copyright © 2018 Sherwin Bitsui All rights reserved
from Dissolve
Copper Canyon Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission