It begins with the waves:
overcrowded with floating plastic water bottles
and six-pack soda rings,
coating all that is familiar in this blue liquid.
Far below, there are blackened blobs of baby wipes,
mangled plastic forks and spoons, and loaded layers of red-striped drinking straws.
How they branch into new sea figures,
swimming with the muscled trash bags and Styrofoam cups.
It is as though the ocean is claiming all of the abandoned particles:
pushing through this unnatural achievement,
merging into the greater living darkness,
while we silently watch.
This poem first appeared in Breakwater Review.
—
Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), which was a finalist for theWhirling Prize and reviewed by Publishers Weekly. She is an eight-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Cave Canem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Obsidian Fellow, Poetry Editor at The Hopper, and Full Professor at the University of Puerto Rico. Literary Hub, Poets.org, and The Los Angeles Review have published her work.
