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.
Copyright Credit: Maggie Dietz, "Why I Don’t Piss in the Ocean" from Perennial Fall. Copyright © 2006 by Maggie Dietz. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
Source: Perennial Fall (The University of Chicago Press, 2006)