The Poet Re-imagines Genesis After The World Begins

Below me is a sea of infinite desolation,
And I feel fine. I want to punish myself.

Don’t think me naughty. My mother
Is somewhere else. She stinks like lavender

To me. To me, the earth is only the sea,
As to any woman who has traveled so high

Into heaven. The ground collapses like everything
Real. Everything that is real is not profane;

I will say naughty and picture a woman
Who is me, crawling across green dirt

Into a sea so unnatural that all living creatures
Who flourish in its depths are deprived

Of the divine chemical who makes them rush
With a lash of the tailfin: the nothingness of going

From this to that. And the sea, I’m afraid, being
Unreal, will rush through my open window this evening

And soak the furniture. My mother says I’m naughty
For allowing such genesis to occur in the imagination

And if only she were still alive I would touch her hand
And assure her that her soul will escape from her sockets

Like an ancient dust, under pressure for so long,
Finally released by the efforts of these modern people

Whose only curiosity, Le Jennifer, is to destroy.