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Aug. 2 Two weeks out. This far north the sun barely touches the horizon before it rises again. No wind now for three days. We have not seen the skipper since friday night, but we can hear him screaming from his cabin: "The sea has many gods!" The sea is oddly calm; his voice carries for miles. Aug. 13 No fish. This morning we dragged up the bloated corpse of a sea lion. The first mate stared long at its body before he decided that it was not a mermaid and we threw it back overboard. Aug. 23 The holds are empty still; our nets drag useless behind us. Cook says he hears bells in the distance. He has been drunk for days. T

       i. Island Morning here is a brightly lit kitchen where a redheaded woman drinks black coffee and smokes by the window, half asleep but eyes open for the mail boat and for the sun. Her lips taste like salt. Things are less real out here; the walls move with the wind and light shoots out from the window — to the mainland, where men live, and farther: to where the sea is distant and the memory of her is worth no less than everything.       ii. Mainland Men drown here at night. They wake up hours later in soaked sheets, their lungs still raw with salt. She knows they're out there, waiting for that one mistake    

An Old Man  He says, "I dreamt of an old man  who travelled back in time to  become himself as a boy."  And the sun — older than  he is, older than man —  watches him disappear.  He reappears seventy-five years earlier,  but still here,  still with us, and—  We let him go.  We let him go and now  he has never lived. A Girl  Her arms are wrapped around her body.  "The dawn has a shape," she says,  "and a voice, and —"  she smiles — "it knows my name."  Twisted so tightly around herself  she doesn't even exist any more. A Funeral Procession  The ships, silver paperplanes,  glide

i. Missing Here she is — silent; screamed so much before. Only echoes, echoes now. Little girl with the dry mouth, waiting for rain. (Good girl.) When the voices come near, she slips away — remains girl. ii. Shells Elsewhere, in another time: her totality. Twenty times larger than these shells, celluloid. She transcends everything — more: forgives everything. (One small gesture.) Remains. iii. Beyond the Sea She moulds clay: faces of nameless gods, skulls of skull gods — not to touch, only to believe. Remembers a place beyond the sea, where there is no water only rock and no water; no

i. Zoë She stops screaming. She can't even feel it anymore; there's just his breath on her face: Tell me how brave you are, tell me how hard you've been trying. . . . Later. She calls herself Zoë, spends nights with a girl who is everyone -- washes her clothes, dries her hair. Closer to earth than to heaven, but holy: she's got a place for their bodies to meet. ii. Mary There is no pain, she says, I've seen you before, I know you so well. Counting the stars, waiting for morning and the light,  light,  light. iii. Joan He turned her into this, into these hands, into these armies. And when they come for her, -- we'll se

I take my clothes off, turn the lights off, and eat some ice cream. Call me.

But in the darkness only light, in the light only darkness; in God only Man, in Man only God.

We have to burn all that now; we have to deny everything. We have to pretend that no one died -- even without death I would've forgiven.          *   *   * This is where I will start the new age: I will dress in your colors and destroy all that was ours.

pink-purple sunrise; birds sing, children laugh -- I want to kill, kill them all.   *  *  * Watch out! They're building walls.    *  *  * the girl is silent -- she wants to taste your skin.    *  *  * Sunrise: drank my coffee hours ago.    *  *  * Sunset: weatherman talks of snow.