Peggy Garrison in House Organ
Cable Slips
(After Martinson)We're fishing in the Atlantic around Barbados and Tortuga;
a hollow horizon up ahead—
a Beluga whale is caught in a broken net
15 knots to the north, caught in 61 degrees of vast longitude.
It's stalled like a rotund orator
surrendering to a hushed crowd.
From Montreal to St. Johns
millionaires are sleeping,
bobbing on yachts above deep currents
of sadism and horror.
We float in the language of oil tankers
and in crates of gold liquor—
become entangled in fishnets,
then sink in our heaviness
till without life-rings
we drown.