Skyline-to-the-Sea
BY CATE LYCURGUS
There was a time we knew with certainty
what we would go and do. We called it
landing, we saw it promised, and dipped
our noses toward the bay, readied
our wheels above the waves’ pacific
commas, bright-cresting delays—
and we trusted the ground
to reveal itself for our touching down
at the last second, never questioning
our own deaths. How tenuous they’d be.
This peninsula-city has no graves left,
buries dead in unknown places. Unfazed,
we embraced gravity, made our way
down the coast’s arm to where you lay,
and took twenty questions to ascertain
your latitudes of ache. Head shaking, tube
raking along your parched throat—we can’t
screen agonies closest to us—
where yeast has colonized the tongue
in a crust preventing speech. No bottle
brush tree can brush it off, nor we,
the need to have direction, be some
remedy—the dog has a blazon of burrs
on her chest, and we go home to pull
them off, find the fruit-of-the-month
sunk to counters, its scales a maze of rot.
We hold the knife as we hold
our lives: to the basket of pineapples,
not having cut one before. We twist
a crown, kitchen drowns in its manna
smell and slicing the scales we go for the core,
mangle it with our stubborn torque,
mostly throw them away. It’s knives
we use for shredding and to do the spreading,
too. We stroke your hand all afternoon—
ambrosia that we’re making; these days
we stomach canned fruit.
