Snorkeling Kawaihae

Yellow tang, blue parrotfish, spotted puffers — some

ballooned, some flaccid — hundreds of silver trumpets,

pendulous wrasse. The water is clear, then, as it deepens,

murkier, coral architecture mottled dark & light. Round

one outcrop glides a snake, ghostly white floater. It turns

from my shadow, sinks to a rubbled perimeter, threads 

into a dark place. No interest in me at all, yet I panic.

My flippered kicks propel me back to the beach. I unstick

my mask, wrench my feet free, reach for a towel, cower

in a chilly offshore breeze. What’s the smell of a snake 

coiled in salt water? Out of flickering sea a knob rises,

cracks open to suck down air. Why would a life move

& hunt & breed in one atmosphere & breathe another?

The long peregrinations, poised ascents, brief inhales.

Goodhart's Law

the short & simple Annals of the Poor

                                      — Thomas Gray

parking lot of the Maynard Mill, what felt like miles from car to heated

buildings, times I walked past the asphalt edge with the most beautiful

man for a fuck on the sly, his wife also beautiful, so I wondered, why’d

he do it? the two of us, stolen candy, sugar buzz — oh, to be so desired

I don’t remember his name, or hers, did they or did they not have babies?

as I did, safe in daycare, every other week bundled off to their father

I had my cake & ate it too with names I do remember — Harry, Ralph

Paul, Lucas, Sean — truant from our jobs those long-lunch afternoons

other times we’d randomly pair, cocking a snook at Emily Post behavior

fucking & laughing — the post-birth-control pre-Aids age of Roe —

anything a body could do with teeth & hair, hollows, bulges, elbows,

knuckles, breastbones, spines, every body different, every body the same

I was no one’s except my own, & when a later husband wanted to know

how many, I couldn’t tell him, I’d notched no belts, Goodhart’s Law says

when a measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure

where would such a figure go? Times obit? Insta post? tombstone?

Odd the Sea

where boats manned by men sink

every single one, as if the Phoenicians

never existed, as if Polynesians

never set sail, as if Lord Nelson

drowned in his bath, unremarked

whereas women sail unmolested

pacific, they have no words for war —

shield, siege, castle, moat — they abide

peacefully in thatched cottages

feed on plants, worship no gods

children are amply praised & men exist

tho hobbled at birth & castrated after one

instance of sexual congress — they make

decent pack animals, & like the women

dream & sing & dance & make art

no one remembers how women

learned to minimize men, one suspects

a pre-historic testosterone-amped surge

nipped in the bud by womenfolk

once a year they don scare-masks

they run, shout, rattle gourds

beat on drums, oh, & how they laugh

Cinnamon

Each man lives beneath a tree and during the winter covers the tree with waterproof white felt, which he removes for the summer.

              — Herodotus

flying over the region during winter I note the white-capped trees

in the country of the Argippaioi, & under each tree a man

(though I alter the text to say “a woman”), I imagine her, all

winter licking black fluid drained from the fruit of the pontikon tree

Herodotus is not to be believed but to be entertained by

the fabulous tale about winged serpents who build nests of cinnamon

stalks & cinnamon traders who chop animals into large pieces

onto the forest floor, whence the serpents carry the chunks to their nests

where the weight causes the nests to fall to the earth, where traders gather

cinnamon stalks & carry them off to far lands to exchange for gold

as for the Issedones, their women share power equally with 

their men — who believes that? & they feast on their fathers’ dead bodies

plus griffins & one-eyed men, yet what’s most incredible are the wars

wars & more wars, kings & sons of kings & malcontents & deceivers

beheadings, impalings, hangings & stranglings, sacrifices, exiles

but Herodotus does not tell all, he sometimes chooses to forget