The tide being out, I’d to traipse through dehydrated eelgrass
and the chopped warm salad of the shallows, and then the
Atlantic breached me part by part.

If my knees knocked it was two flints striking
My skin shagreen
My thorax a corset compressed rib by rising rib
My fingerprints finely-carved trilobites of the shore
My fine motor skills as good as any butterwort’s
My nail-beds pale flukes: lemon soles or witches
My blood a thick slow scrawl of crude
If seals mobbed the shallows, it was only for my liver
If my kidneys complained, they were Bert and Ernie
My throat a maypole for eel-grass
My retinas red rags to bulls
A raw kebab, my vertebrae strung on the spinal cord
My nose and ears sympathetic remora
My pigtail a withered stipe or shaw
My moles and freckles rising spores
If I floated it was spatch-cock, trussed on the swell
If I expressed myself well, it was liquids and vowels
My musculature like dispersing cirrus
My sweat-glands like mud-buried lugworms
My children a cloud of clumped alfabeti
My urine a strong, hot tisane
If my knuckles were cracked, it was for their chilled marrow
My lips and tongue seasoned by an infinite cruet
My sphincters the knots in a balloon poodle
My brain-pan a shovel of quenched ash
My cerebellum a bait-ball
The full moon the most serious in a season of crushes
My slack my hammock
My plankton my inattention
My ghost pots my amnesia for names and faces
My luciferins my name in lights
My name sticks and sinking stones
My littoral my high-disclosure zone
My breadcrumb sponge my ephemeral path home