Sea lions sound the cave walls, sound the waves beating against
the cave entrance, sound the fissures and holes the waves make,
shaped like Silurian fish heads and predator worms. Sea lion
barking echoes off the sea-soaked lichen woven into stone, loud
enough to flay mind from muscle, muscle from bone; a sound
that forces me to suck in the sea-stink of their breath; each drop
of spray a cacophony of bacteria releasing dimethyl sulphide
from sounding dead phytoplankton. Iodine air, algae air, dead
fish-belly scent, brings the bilateral shape of my body into being,
brings the bilateral shape of your body into being, too. Our bodies,
an echo of that first sea worm with mouth and shithole: to shout
joy at the sea along with the sea lions, making a map of the sea-
depths and ourselves at the same time; and then dump our waste
into the waves – create vast plastic-infested gyres, spinning,
deathless, where coastal anemones and brittle stars still cling, far
from home; feeling the map of it all, where each body senses
euphoria (whatever euphoria means to that particular shape); and
each body is also a hole, an absence, a loss, an echo of loss.
Christien Gholson is the author of several poetry books, including The Next World (Shanti Arts), Absence: Presence (Shanti Arts), and All the Beautiful Dead (Bitter Oleander Press); along with a novel, A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind (Parthian Books). Several of his chapbooks are online, including Tidal Flats (Mudlark). He is the recent recipient of a Pushcart Prize, lives in Oregon, and works as a mental health counselor at a clinic collective. http://christiengholson.blogspot.com/
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