On:

In the darkness,women and childrenare wading in the water. I. Cebu, Visayan Sea When the imagination failsto discover a girl, Magdalena,scanning the tie linesfor clumps of swaying guso,the harvesting of which willschool her into lifting on moredistant, choppy, speculative seas. II. Gorumna, Droim Quay, Ceantar na nOileán Bríd Ní MháilleContinue Reading

On:

As a child, my favorite summertime souvenir wasNot seashells or sand crabs butThe tar that stuck to my salty feetLike a sailor’s tattoosAnd I’d dance upon the web-like shadow ofThe water treatment plantThat I mistook as part of the refineryIn hopes of staining myself permanently My efforts were no matchContinue Reading

On:

I pulled aside tightly packed furniture items on the basement floor of my dimly-lit apartment storage area, searching for boxes containing some old family photos. At last, I found them and eventually the one box with the photos I’d been looking for. They all were taken about twenty years beforeContinue Reading

On:

We should fear the ocean. Something we know without being told. Enter extremity: A shifting massEasily knocking us to the sandWith such obviousUnrestrainablePower. I almost died in the ocean once But breath broke through The suffering void And aspiring skin Touched the shore again. Since that haunted eveningThe sea andContinue Reading

On:

I’m here to fetch things that float up,Devoted to the murk of ocean, No hint whatever it isA few feet below, Where iridescence wavesBefore vanishing. I come to this dockEach morning And imagineA flounder, the wise seer, Gazing from his abyssThrough tricks of light At the stranger craning his neckInContinue Reading

On:

I can forgive myself for leaving him where he was, but I can’t forgive myself for spending one whole year in depressed rage, forbidding anyone from saying her name in front of me. For three hundred and sixty-seven days and nights I lived in a world washed free of colorsContinue Reading

On:

I live two monthseach sleeping hour. A set of fires burnmy night house. I cover my eyes, slip slowinto coldwater. Carrion birds gatherat the vigilantedge of what I want whenI awaken. It’s never there, ever. I age at the searing speed of light. Carolyn Adams’ poetry and art have appearedContinue Reading

On:

Vague images sway through my skull,Sloshing under the dented cranial dome,Like a liquid motherboard, uprooting strandsOf a dream, I thought had been long forgotten. As the motion-picture reel plays, I step insideMyself, not far enough to become lost in theWorld of cracked screens and wavering signals,But close enough to tasteContinue Reading