Ann Elliott Sherman
May Day
where has that shiny engineered
perfection sunk
stay the impermanent
rubbery course through indifferent
swells why this
situationally inappropriate craving
for champagne while surrounded
by wet threatening
evidence the human body only likes
saline solutions warm and before
fully operational
oh cold continual flex of
three-quarters of one
world, my only
coast far away dreams, further
lost and dying
memory reefs stripped to bone, jagged
and unmerciful,
devoid of the curious
avidity of snorklers, fondly jaded
familiar guides, most of those
sheeny strokes, stripey sleek
swift tickles, those improbable blued
fuchsias, unquenchable sun
fires graffitied with black, dipped
iridescence, even
lacerating shells of the formerly
clinging
how is it I’m still here
taking on water but thinly
held somehow
apart from letting go totally
no one’s searching for the fizzing arc
mustered from a dampened flare
down to one last gash
courtesy of currents and fate’s
iceberg
