Für Lucy

Yeah, it’s a dog poem, deal with it.

You’ve got an ocean inside of you.
The brutal, sandy hacks confirmed my diagnosis (silly girl, you cannot cough up an ocean!)
And why you choose to spend your shuddering last moments curled up by my face is beyond me
(Too dumb to know that I’m your Judas or too simple to care?)
So many little things tucked up in you, away inside of you
And now this. Where is there room for an ocean?
No wonder you throw up sea foam
In kelp weed green and hazy dead yellow
Or red like the coral reed or high-tide Bible fungus
Or like a beach ball
Swollen and distended like your tummy, it all makes sense now!

Are there people on your belly beach?
When I listen, I don’t hear–
It sounds empty and hollow, like deep-tissue reverberations
Makes me feel like how I feel the night before
Something coming, but so far off and in another existence
And able to be prolonged indefinitely if I can only
stay
awake.

It’s like a spirit cave, or a subtle world
By some terrible, gruesome misconstruction mine ended up inside of you
At least now, when it comes time, I can just
Lay my head against your back and listen to the sanguine sound of distant waves.