the first thing the auk notices about heaven
is just how thin it is: one aglow tentacle
of a jellyfish stretched between the high cirrus
& plankton-dusted space. the amenities are
that it feels like flying & that there’s no shade.
the auk is not impressed. she never needed air to fly
& she’d like to sleep without the sun’s insistence.
oh well. she bides her time laying eggs on the backs
of passing birds. she dives for plankton but the stars
are farther than they look. space is barren, shorn
only rarely by mute mirror-sided whales. she floats
for some immeasurable period on the tufts of a great
conversion: the sailors of st. kilda, christian at long last.
then they forget what they’ve done or they die or the wind
changes. the auk, who has subsisted on clouds,
snags a piece of the tastiest & drags it down with her
as she descends. it is then—in how the fogs wreathe her,
in some gone-grey twist of the light—that she
transforms. witch-auk lands in the north atlantic.
she is an invention: the fantasy & its rejection—
a monstrosity—slippage—not-human &
not-not. the sea is a sheet of glass that breaks
to pieces, breaks to pieces—wounds that suture
themselves. working as fast as they can.
—
Erin L. McCoy’s poetry collection, Wrecks, is forthcoming from Noemi Press. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Pleiades, Conjunctions, and other publications. Her work has been selected for the Best New Poets anthology twice, and she was a finalist for the Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize. Her website is erinlmccoy.com.
