Seven-foot swells, picador
wind jabs from the west
and horn toggles dangle
from your open navy
coat. Thumb the deckled edge
of a baleen plate, shaggy sable
marbled keratin washed up
because resurrectable krill
couldn’t tip the scales toward
song; reckon if whales circulate
with similar chill reverence
our chance teeth among themselves.
Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024) and Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize). Her most recent chapbook is Night Ocean (Seven Kitchens Press, 2023). Her poems appear in Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Image, At Length, Consequence, and elsewhere. She lives in Massachusetts.
