The aerial view looks like a bathtub
filled with colored pencils. But the pencils
are splintered. The tub, an ocean.
Imagine a blue iris magnified, imagine
a marble sliced in half—
The newspapers measure things comparatively.
Everything floating is bigger
than Texas and it’s moving
faster than we originally thought.
What’s the word for corpses
that refuse to sink? Athletic shoes
that keep bodies afloat?
Oil drums, barrels of rice, a fisherman
a fisherman’s daughter—
In Japan, the children who lost pets
are given Paro, a robotic seal.
They’re asking that anything sentimental
be returned.
June Rockefeller received her MFA from Emerson College, where she served as Poetry Editor of Redivider. Recent work can be found in or is forthcoming from: Box of Jars, H.O.W., Poet Lore, and Thrush. She lives and works in Boston.
