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.