Eileen Myles
Seattle Harbor

They call it human

because of this

rolling

they call it present

because it is never

the same

free unlike 

the metal bars that frame it

they call it peach

because a line

of a boat is cutting

across and I can

see the color

I call it I

because I am one

not M not Many

not X, but I

the Vs of the birds

are flapping

I call it V because

of one tiny

moment

in which the 

bird coasts

the moment is empty

imagine

it barely exists

the rolling lumps

of the waves

I smell the people

sociology

his fluttering foot

heel facing

he slips out his 

load another

guy, green, Hi,

 

not one but 2

the stabbing pier

floating, bouncing

the backs that leave

re the boats

further out the 

water has stripes,

wives, I want to

go home, I travel

by air, sky,

it would take so long

by boat, that one

that's inching away

from my eye

the blue stuff

the mountains whatever

beyond it's lapping

flapping so close

ding, PRINCESS

collection of men,

sax 5, see 6

walk away, one man

his lips, pursed

and kissing sucking

clucking keep

beat to the

sky & the view

the honk

of view

so silent

what island

is huddled

so close

it succeeds me

the world

it's hurtling

 
Found In Volume 28, No. 02
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Eileen Myles
About the Author

Eileen Myles is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, plays and libretti most recentlySnowflake/different streets (poetry), Inferno (a poet’s novel)for which she won a Lambda book award, The Importance of Being Iceland/travel essays in art which was supported by a Warhol/Creative Capital art writers’s grant.