Friday, March 06, 2020

poem by Karen Chamisso


Leilah changes my sheets
once every three days
Phillipe and I lay encoupled
in the odor of ironing and sachet.

“According to the naturalist A.N. Bragham
The waters of the Mare Nostrum
are changed complete every 7500 years
- an estimate that like most of ‘em

depends on a host of alterable circumstances.
From Gibraltar to Beirut
the sea turns and tosses
on an undercurrent that would not suit

with Leila’s notions, nor mine
Still, we dive, one after the other
in the water of the Calanque de Port d’Alon
and plunge down into that unmade water.

Intimations of death
are cheap in the eyes of this sea.
We’ll pass before one snorting breath
is exhaled by geology.


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