The Ocean Sea’s ever-churning,
churning, mixed mists with our steaming
breaths. See the bird
found dead on deck, whispers of down
at its throat. Piss overboard
and keep towing forward. Rip bones
from the sea, divest them
of meat, toss them over the railing.
Now we are conquerors.
Later, returning east, we will just
be sailors. But don’t forget
how that bird landed on our ship,
genuflected at the might
of it, thanked whatever bird-god
to be ours. How,
when we made land, reflected
in the eyes of the men
and women and children, we did not
know ourselves.
Like they’d taken our places: frozen
at the turns a life takes
all outside of our control. Later, much
later, birds found dead
in droves will be called wrecks.
There will be so few
sailing ships, we’ll use the word elsewhere
lest it go extinct. We,
meanwhile, will be thriving—not inside
our bodies, but
in the way the land curves, terrified,
into distance.
—
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.
