A Very Distinct Corner of a Flooding Home

by Joan Tate

Sags, and so                                                                  Farewell to dryness,

Farewell to need                                                           the distinct corner, in the basement, becoming

hunger describes                                                         an aquarium of empty,

so poorly, the snows                                                    fluid somnolence interspersed

of the last new year                                                     with belts like eels, Roy Orbinson records,

only making cold                                                         a blind moray like

through gaps in memory, gaps                               a baseball bat, sealed jar of spent and snapped

I’m ashamed of                                                           razors, a portrait of ruined Marat

this present sun only good                                        it all is ferruginous and sticky, but

for making sweat while falling                                  the salt water is not tears         

awake, wet noises below                                           it is the fleeting literality

wish                                                                               of a space filled with polluted and thus

                                                                                      now natural Atlantic water, opalescent sheen

                                                                                      punctured by bendy straws, uncut

Farewell to sleep                                                        beer-rings, the bones and bloated

Impossible through                                                    bodies of dead and dowsed sea-critters

Salt memory, skin memory                                       crustaceans, feathers slicked with

Preserved dry tongue                                                 oil at one point

and dryer throat coated                                            I make my way up the stairs

the quiet flushing                                                        through the carpeted steps

white that wicks, not like cotton                                overtaken by salt

at all, more salt                                                            and I sit on the roof, the crests

lazily maintaining meat,                                             lap my house, in great wide hoops

great interpretive swathes                                         like young and pale exuberant dogs

of brown damage,

basement filled and painted

long ago,                                                                       Farewell

abandoned my bailing                                               to the day and to need

after you’d gone                                                           and the freshwater lawn

so many months later a closet and                         you tended

now the walls of the first flow                                     for me and your land once

beyond sopped with                                                   rich from finding I fear

salt. My coats are now useless,                                  I’ll never find again.