This Imagined Ocean Poem by Jenny Kalahar

This imagined ocean floods my rowboat in throbs
pounding up through a hole I can't locate
to the screeching rhythm of gulls enjoying my misery.
My hundred-year-old rowboat, beat to hell
is sinking, suffocating under what seeps up
and I am suffocating
under the rising, rising, rising
created from cold things melting
while this imagined ocean kills me

This imagined ocean claims my body.
I bob in freezing imagined waters
searching the sky for clouds to lasso
for rescue planes that never circle.
No one wants me anymore
except nudging, testing sharks,
except the Lord who waits
to claim my imaginary soul

This imagined ocean sucks me under
shows me for a moment wiser beings there
that have learned not to die submerged, half-frozen
learned to thrive, to eat each other,
all the while contemplating
a possible world above the surface
wondering how weird beings who dangle lines and hooks
who float in boats and breathe in toxins
endure, survive
in some imaginary city
on some imaginary land