East Region

Last summer i was balancing the sun

on my shoe, balancing this

form of light on my toe

and thinking about shaking

the sand from the crevices

of my body into which it had crept

as the water swallowed the sand

as the sand had swallowed my footprints

Every gull call was a hunger I notched on the concrete grey wall of the sky

And every scratch in the beach was a tattoo on turtle rough skin

And every inch of my flesh made the air growl with entropy

the fiery trail beneath the fireball

of this hydrogen bomb bullseye

of our solar system

was missed in target practice

by the seagull piss in the lake

and seagull shit in the sand

and dead fish in the tiny shadow

of a dwarf planet I keep between my legs

that all observe my lunch

with great suspicion in their rotted out eyes

And every grain of sand is how many glass houses?

And every universe is how many more bacteria?

And every nanosecond is what differential of occupied space?

Call me a nervous observer taking a break from my anxieties

Call me the reduction of identity to habit

Call me relaxed on a distant shore I imagine could kill me

Call me glances at the vast emptiness of space stolen between blinks

Call me home

Call me a home far away, a water taxi or a ferry to Archeron, a glum lot, a bigger boat, the mute panic of a swine herd who clutches the last pearls of wisdom and strews them from the gate of his doylt’s pen to the woods were they all become a sounder

Call me the clothes of a tame animal and tear them from their body

Call me the stretch of bones and yawn

Call me the tide for a laugh

Call me a multiple choice test and color me none of the above in the disappearing ink we draw from beneath this watercolor coast