WRACK ZONE
It’s the ocean
sounding out
a panic
I otherwise
couldn’t
pronounce.
Ouroboric
vowel fixed
to a low sky’s
loop of
variable white.
•
Decayed
rope of
bull-head
kelp
distends
from tide-
tamped
sand.
Mind
mirrors
that surface,
shape, at
the moment
I imagine
if I thought
far enough
I’d leave my
face.
RECEIPT
Wall streaked
of soot of
moths crushed
months ago
as dawn closes
in, opening
the room.
To wait
for what
the weather’s
saying
to lay
the day
unnameable.
GONE
Some evidence
of a world
raw to my waking, word-
less at first
coils into noise—
Name it summer,
an after-
thought,
a hangover.
A monkey flower
flung
over its own shadow.
Joseph Massey is the author of Areas of Fog (Shearsman Books, 2009) and At the Point (Shearsman Books, 2011), as well as eleven chapbooks. He lives in Arcata, California.