We were locked into the mystery
& wanted out. We moved like the half-great, sea
-chewed half-girls on the old merchant prows,
so we didn’t. Our backs were screwed to
one great thing, to the great by-then
ruth that canaried through the ruthless bodies
of water, while everything we had above the waist
ran & outran the vessel we could not run
ourselves off of. After midnight cast its lot
we cast about with our elemental heads
for a requiem shark, disaster, its undertow
& drag. What we were really after was the
hot knife & compass of the flesh. We would have
drowned ourselves in it, if. The sailor
-stars bandaged our foreheads with light as if they,
too, longed for arms’ breach. When what we’d been told
was enough was enough
to abandon, get by, abandon, &, barely, arrive.