The shore is brailled by detritus: shelled
& detonating with the sea. I’m done
with talking visually about shit, de-
scribing: what’s light to those who only know the sun
as an oven in their loaved bones?
From now I’ll fast on sound, the gramophone
tide set on edge, the rising, hissing wires
of water coiled into stone. What’s stone
if not light that’s hardened to a stubbornness?
The eye stubborn, leaving the world unread in the face
of the sea’s regard. This is how to draw the sea
for “those without the luxury of sight”:
draw a voice that never learns to leave its throat—
a whitened voice that washes up your body.
Cameron Clark is associate poetry editor of Literary Matters. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Agenda, Autumn Sky, Ekphrastic Review, and Literary Matters.
