Another Nameless Sea

Silence is a dog you keep close
to your side. Scattered by your feet
are pearlescent licks of star hinged
at their spines & nestled in the sand.
The mussels break beneath my feet—
there is a delicacy required here.
Every story ends like this: the image,
wounded, in the surf. I am the only
language I can wrangle for you & even then.
When I say the heather is purpling
the cliffs I mean there is a hollow
below your throat like a ribboned conch.
I would press my ear there—I would listen
for all that you would give me.

Dear, Dirty Dublin,

I am of you until
I open my mouth. My first
love was the water, my second,
language—praise the coast
that is all sharp consonants
I lose the moment my parents call
& Pennsylvania cornfields grow again
where they’ve long been planted.
America is a fallow question
I am expected to answer in every
season—yes I am, no, I don’t want
what it makes me, yes maybe
my fear has followed. Neither of us
take comfort from worship, but how
else is a country sated? Attend:
the shedding of skin as penance.
Another country’s first snake.