Dark oceans across which people are ferried
into captivity— five hundred faces blued
by water pierced by moonlight,
pieced together to form a vessel measuring
twenty-four feet
Even then the sea understands how many
could be lost at once to fire
or storms, in this way becoming souls
Out west, on a runway, a person jumps a fence
and walks directly in the path of Flight 4345
Air traffic control repeats the phrase
for rescuers to confirm the number of people
who might need removal or extraction
The grammar of archives, of our accounting—
more than just the language of the incident report
Dalamhati— grief of the deepest kind,
from the Malay root for interior, something seated
in the liver or the heart
Sorrow as more than affliction, because lodged
in the body
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
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