Press a foot into this beach and blood

---

will ooze up instead of salt

water. If there are poems

let them come in sick

waves like pushing contractions

for a birth I did not have

the strength to finish.

Cut me, cut me! They cut me

stem to stern and out

came a little drug addict.

Do you know the houses

here are built from shipwrecks?

That the non-denominationals

host a vespers service in a chapel

whose weekly whitewashing

will not staunch the bleeding

of the wood? The mad

reversals: fawns are carnivores,

coyotes whine for edible

flowers. Each morning glory

a tsunami siren. Cut me!

The ocean too is red though

it thought it was exempt.