Why I Don’t Piss in the Ocean

By Maggie Dietz

Once my sister told me that from her summit at the city
pool she could see the yellow billows spread like gas
or dreams between kids’ legs. In something the size of the sea,
you can’t be sure who’s watching from above. Let’s say
it’s the Almighty, twirling His whistle, ready to blow it
at any moment and let loose the bottomless Apocalypse:
the ocean would make bone of a body, coral of bone.
Piss, and a tiger-fish darts through a skull-hole, a weed
weaves itself through ribs. You, too, have seen
the bulbs flash from the sea. You, too, have felt
it breathing down your neck. You eat fish. You’ve heard
that mermaids sing. My dreams are as beleaguered as the next
Joe’s, my happiness as absurd, but I’m not going to go
piss in the ocean about it. No, not in the ocean.

Beloved, men in thick green coats came crunching
through the snow, the insignia on their shoulders
of uncertain origin, a country I could not be sure of,
a salute so terrifying I heard myself lying to avoid
arrest, and was arrested along with Jocko, whose tear
had snapped off, a tiny icicle he put in his mouth.
We were taken to the ice prison, a palace encrusted
with hoarfrost, its dome lit from within, Jocko admired
the wiring, he kicked the walls to test the strength
of his new boots.  A television stood in a block of ice,
its blue image still moving like a liquid center.
You asked for my innermost thoughts.  I wonder will I
ever see a grape again?  When I think of the vineyard
where we met in October—when you dropped a cluster
custom insisted you be kissed by a stranger—how after
the harvest we plunged into a stream so icy our palms
turned pink.  It seemed our future was sealed.  Everyone
said so.  It is quiet here.  Not closing our ranks
weakens us hugely.  The snowflakes fall in a featureless
bath.  I am the stranger who kissed you.  On sunny days
each tree is a glittering chandelier.  The power of
mindless beauty!  Jocko told a joke and has been dead
since May.  A bullethole in his forehead the officers
call a third eye.  For a month I milked a barnful of
cows.  It is a lot like cleansing a chandelier.  Wipe
and polish, wipe and polish, round and round you go.
I have lost my spectacles.  Is the book I was reading
still open by the side of our bed?  Treat it as a bookmark
saving my place in our story.

(here the letter breaks off)