The Administrator
Hair like marshes of beanie baby fur,
pruned and worn down by infant gums.
Teeth the colour of mildew in the shower
of a derelict shack in the bayou.
Our interferences
were a return to childhood.
Ever-growing run-offs,
expanding dead zones.
Your voice is a bald eagle’s cry
softening in darkness
to a bassoon’s lament for a nest
filling a shady grotto,
a poor substitute.
Puffer fish lips
dissect my hurt with no quarter
until “you’re smarter than you look”
passes off as a quirky compliment.
There’s a photo of us
inside the pharynx of a whale.
In my hadal zone I knew:
we were living in a carcass,
in that jaw about to snap.
Interference- the combination of two or more electromagnetic waveforms to form a resultant wave in which the displacement is either reinforced or cancelled.
Dead zones- low-oxygen, or hypoxic, areas in the world's oceans and lakes.
Apple (Op-Ed from an exile in Silicon Valley)
You took a second bite
of the apple
and lost your humanity,
lost the beasts of the
earth and sky,
lost the moon, the stars
and the water.
lost our ancient
language
and its poetry.
Instead you compile new
languages.
Those of us who speak
the old tongue,
your amanuenses
taking down your orders,
try to speak to you,
the new humans,
in this, the new
Babylon.
Guard Irons
Your hunting oscillation,
punctuated anxiety and grief,
laughter coming to a full stop
at the end of each sentence.
The greyed armpits
of your rosy coat
cocooning you
repelled me,
an indistinct receiver
for the relentless revolution of
gangrenous digits,
estrangements,
recapitulations.
Unable to bring myself to
being, to
level,
I was a nodding puppet
on the dashboard
of our train, clunking
towards the empty junction.
Beware of Ducks
Snails trailing evanescent glitter
just by virtue of going places,
reflecting the light that follows everywhere,
sinuously feeling their way around
with immense gentleness.
Having the fortitude
to carry the weight of a home
and the bravery to emerge from it
with all their fragility.
It’s dangerous to be a snail,
yet they cannot hurry.
Instead, they slowly highlight
the way,
softening the ground so others may
follow.
How hard the world must feel
to the underbelly,
how rough when poked
with soft tentacles,
reaching out to feel,
to touch,
to discover
what’s out there.
D'or Seifer contributes to poetry gatherings, such as Filí an Tí Bháin, and On the Nail. She co-runs the online poetry series Lime Square Poets. Her work has recently appeared in Skylight 47,The Galway Advertiser's Vox Galvia page, and Pendemic.
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