Wreckers

A foremast cuts purple
fog, its pine gashes sand—

the bruised past is over-
turned and full of busted suitcases gutted at the zipper—

                 remember, this is before
                 what was
                 and was then

disassembled—whatever floats
surely fashions the best raft. Survivors of the wreck       collecting our
selves in pieces where they washed ashore
among torn jellyfish bells and ship debris—
                         wading forward, meet me

in the crushed city  city of waves       redundant city
of impossible beginnings   endlessly walking to
the edge of avenues that begin again where they stop—

                 one city grows
                 over another
                 city’s skin

scribbled directions
on pink chiffon     a city where death is the laugh of a girl
walking her puma through humid gardens
a foot falls and replaces itself
from levee to rampart and back where she began—

Restless girl.
Restless puma.

All signs have been removed:

        a mind searches anyway
        to be alive
        at last, on the same shoreline—

relief in the form of a port  a lighthouse     a face
peeking through smoke
stops a bullet with topaz eyes    no refuge

more true than a home before it was built
swamps of corpse
flowers, lizards, moon
fables—

        no city grows from the earth
        without sinking into
        the sea, tangled blood
        vessels and urchins—

What signs are left to comfort us? Are we making
meaning from silt or mean enough to make a good-
sounding story that leads to more plunder? A child’s
map drawn on a blanket pulled over her head

after the flashlight’s dead. Welted

        salt         sky        the worn horizon
        is a split lip

bleeding ruins along the beach
where our city rises through sedge—

          a stillness swells. There is no home that isn’t gone.