In Broken Latin: Poems

The Fleet Admiral’s Daughter

e Fleet Admiral’s Daughter For Sister Aquinas Nimitz I. Nuclear Powered US Aircraft Carrier, Class Name: Nimitz I think of your life as a tide pool— filled, emptied twice a day, morning and evening psalms, the red anemone of your soul anchored to this choir stall. sometimes you found your name deployed in the arabian sea or Persian gulf, so you walked the beach in your habit and black cape, draped seaweed over urchins, gulls dive-bombing them at low tide. and thank you for not making a show of it, like sarah winchester, who built a thousand rooms to wall out a thousand Civil war ghosts, shot with the family gun. did you ever pray to the sea, pray to the sea, ad nauseum, until it re-christened you— salt water breaking against the sharp fin of your ankles? II. Litania Humilitas Mortuorum mystical marine Biologist, pray for us. teacher in the Chloroform-stained Habit, pray for us. Joyful Conchologist, pray for us. –  – sister advocate of Peace, pray for us. Quiet Carrier of the Cancerous Cells, pray for us. III. Sunburst Carrier Shell, Class Name: Gastropoda the first time we shelled Baghdad, you were pruning roses before evening prayer and when a student yelled, It’s on TV; it looks like fireworks! you left the bush, dead stems still hanging. I watched you amble toward the convent chapel so weighted and worried, you reminded me of the small mollusk who cements so much sea debris to her shell, she sinks in the tropical silt. you anchored yourself to that choir stall, praying Our Father on a string of knotted kelp. –  – ...