My eyes have turned to glass, beautiful things that can never see a full moon eclipsed by cloud like a pirate’s patch that censors blindness.

A parrot squawks at me, muttering the same phrase repeatedly, a reverie about poetry, words comprising a vast sea where sail the golden gods on glistening ships—Plunders, pillages, and rapes, songs sung to cinch the irony as bull whips crack with time across backs or boards, creaking with sea-sickness, decks slippery with vomited rum.

Elsewhere silence locks like a peg leg, stuck in nocturnal quicksand—Jungle muddle livid as God with snakes.

vine-covered cave
on a stone tablet
curious cuneiform

Anna Cates