Suppose the boat is gone
And it has been a while

Suppose your cavities are filling 
With bottom feeders 

Fat and hungry 
As steak knives

And it’s becoming difficult 
To go about your business

It's tragic you might announce
To no one in particular

But hush now
Rest your head in the anemone’s mouth

What are you dreaming about?
Maybe the gravitational constant

How if it were infinitesimally different
The universe never would have popped

Or would have drifted to the edges
Too quick to coalesce

Into stars planets 
Forty hundred trillion 

Buckets of black 
Water and the eel 

Making itself at home 
In your left ventricle

Yes you have given up
On meaning

It may have happened years ago
Or right now as you watch 

a column of heat billow 
from a pucker in the stone

A terrible rictus
But listen overhead

To the skreaking of the gulls
that circle like a white net

The ship and its crust of barnacles
Is it all not enough?

If not the grace of dispensation
Then at least wild improbability

A chance slim enough
To wrap itself around your ankles

To move you for a bit
When you cannot move yourself

Published September 19th, 2021

Matthew Brailas received his MFA in poetry from NYU. He lives and works in Philadelphia. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Plain China, Foothill Journal, The St. Ann's Review, Emotive Fruition, FILTH, Panacea, and elsewhere.

Born in Santa Maria, California, Shannon Bodrogi is a musician, artist, and arts educator now based in Seattle, Washington. Bodrogi earned a BA in Printmaking from San Francisco State University and has since exhibited extensively in San Francisco. In 2020, Bodrogi received the Muni Art Award, a collaboration between SF Beautiful, SFMTA, and The Poetry Society of America. Bodrogi is the founder of Psiclops Press, a small press and design studio, and they also teach virtual workshops at The Vera Project and The Center School. More of Bodrogi’s work can be viewed on their website.