In saying the midnight the breast the darkness
he pushes the one we have conquered
over the captain the quarter deck
soft tissues the corpse the child the cabin
in his throat the dead face
and so shaped the flames
against my ear the husky voices
the waves call up the masts the cut
real things the slight shock the soothe
I take to be the world
He, in a fleece-lined hoodie
He, in a leather hat
They, in other rooms
He, another century
They, a century before him
There, at the territory’s
ever-bitten bitten edge
That to speak is to be possessed is not a metaphor
the water turbid
I strip
I launch
I do not call
I am sorry
I keep no account
I am an acme
an encloser of things
I mount and mount
I see
I know
I waited
I was born
I stand
The strong scent now
the sea breeze on my breath
the shore I touch
the hiss the gnawing the sum
of utterance
as unaccountable as inexhaustible as onward
as wind, which
driven by difference
acts on the water’s surface
bevels the light
in the river’s mouth
to call from the wake:
these so, these
fire, these hold
these touch’d, these
still, these serv’d
these stretch’d, these
salt, these stacks
these teeth, these
white, these swash,
these shock, these
dull, these aloft,
these stars, these
below, these
The words set in italics appear in “Song of Myself ” 36 and 44
Allyson Paty is the author of Jalousie (Tupelo Press, 2025), winner of the 2023 Berkshire Prize. Her poems appear in publications including Denver Quarterly, Fence, Poetry, The Recluse, and The Yale Review, and she’s written nonfiction for The Baffler. A 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry and a participant in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s 2017-2018 Workspace Program, Allyson Paty is co-founding editor of Singing Saw Press. She works and teaches at NYU Gallatin and with NYU’s Prison Education Program.