Pacific
- Pacific
Sky swaggers in, low cloudsand sunlight like dried blood
flecked around a mouth. Sky violet, skybeaten gold. I’m up on deck alone
when the sea crosses its legsand they tremble under a slip
of violent silk, dark milk I wantwrecked against my thighs—
waves flash, as eyes, as if to say—I push my body up against the rail—
I want to feel a thing, to feelmyself turn over in my fingers,
turn over in my handsof salt, my mouth of salt. [End Page 93]
Laura Bylenok is the author of Warp, winner of the 2015 T.S. Eliot Prize and forthcoming from Truman State University Press, and the chapbook a/0 (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press, 2014). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Pleiades, North American Review, Guernica, and West Branch, among other journals.
