from Report from the McCarthy Society, Vol. 1 No. 1
•
last
night I dreamt I saw your archive
of
intertidal martyrs
in
formation on the nubbins
•
&
this morning I saw ernie sweeping out front of wallace’s before opening.
he
bent over & picked up something shiny
like
a boy plucking treasure out of flotsam
•
cormorants
lined the trap float
&
spread their wings tip-to-tip
like
a week of uniform shirts pegged on a line to dry
•
in
another dream
you
sat midden-mouthed on the nubbins
as
the long more of the sea smelted swells out behind you
•
there
are things I would confess to you in the half-spaces
when
the tide is out
that
I can never say inland
•
nothing
seems ordinary
that
the tide leaves behind––any bit of any thing
that
endures force & accumulates must be an offering
•
or
so seems to say your wrack archive,
melancholy
selkie, as you keen
like
a poor-tide saint caught unawares, in the in-between
•
if
it’s so that your father could talk the bark off a tree
then
maybe you can write the sea detritus
with
your dreckmouth into a midden-history
•
I
can’t imagine a whole ocean in these little pools of water
left
behind, but there’s enough sea for longing, & enough time
to
bide time before the next high
•
the
intertides are a threshold measured out in tiny bits of calm:
there’s
always something shiny, something smooth,
something
holding heat & something bruised on its return from a deeper realm
•
the
bay way out where it flattens looks like it's been smelted,
except
in patches where light breaks the clouds & makes a small sheet of foil
flattened
by a frugal grandma for reuse.
•
if
we broke the world down completely
&
rebuilt it from scratch, using only words,
I
think it might look exactly as it already does
•
&
then you lean back & your neck goes long to take another oyster by the
throat,
&
you toss the empty half-shell back to the sea
&
the fog rolls in, expanding to the liminal edges of the coastline
Kevin Varrone is the author of three full-length collections of poetry and numerous chapbooks, most recently how to count to ten (above/ground press, 2021). He teaches at Temple University and splits time between Philadelphia and midcoast Maine.